Warming Core

Warming Bad
Core Stuff
Anthro
Best compilation of scientific data proves consensus warming is real and
anthropogenic.
Cook et al 5/15 Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia (John, Quantifying the Consensus on
Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature, 5/15/13; < http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf/1748-
9326_8_2_024024.pdf>)//Beddow
An accurate perception of the degree of scientific consensus is an essential element to public
support for climate policy (Ding et al 2011 ). Communicating the scientific consensus also increases
peoples acceptance that climate change (CC) is happening (Lewandowsky et al 2012 ). Despite numerous
indicators of a consensus, there is wide public perception that climate scientists disagree over the fundamental cause of global
warming (GW; Leiserowitz et al 2012 , Pew 2012 ). In the most comprehensive analysis performed to date,
we have extended the analysis of peer-reviewed climate papers in Oreskes ( 2004 ). We
examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year
period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely
causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW). Surveys of climate scientists have found strong
agreement (9798%) regarding AGW amongst publishing climate experts (Doran and Zimmerman 2009 , Anderegg et al 2010 ).
Repeated surveys of scientists found that scientific agreement about AGW steadily increased
from 1996 to 2009 (Bray 2010 ). This is reflected in the increasingly definitive statements issued by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change on the attribution of recent GW (Houghton et al 1996 , 2001 , Solomon et al 2007 ). The peer-
reviewed scientific literature provides a ground- level assessment of the degree of consensus
among publishing scientists. An analysis of abstracts published from 19932003 matching the search global climate
change found that none of 928 papers disagreed with the consensus position on AGW (Oreskes 2004 ). This is consistent with an
analysis of citation networks that found a consensus on AGW forming in the early 1990s (Shwed and Bearman 2010 ). Despite these
independent indicators of a scientific consensus, the perception of the US public is that the scientific community still disagrees over
the fundamental cause of GW. From 1997 to 2007, public opinion polls have indicated around 60% of the US public believes there is
significant disagreement among scientists about whether GW was happening (Nisbet and Myers 2007 ). Similarly, 57% of the US
public either disagreed or were unaware that scientists agree that the earth is very likely warming due to human activity (Pew 2012
). Through analysis of climate-related papers published from 1991 to 2011, this study provides
the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date in order to quantify and evaluate the level
and evolution of consensus over the last two decades.


Warming is real and the product of anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Cook 12 solar physicist and founder of Skeptical Science (John, The Human Fingerprint in Global Warming, 8/31/12; <
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-intermediate.htm>)//Beddow
In science, there's only one thing better than empirical measurements made in the real world -
and that is multiple independent measurements all pointing to the same result. There are many
lines of empirical evidence that all detect the human fingerprint in global warming: The human
fingerprint in atmospheric carbon dioxide That rising carbon dioxide is caused by human CO2 emissions
should be obvious when comparing CO2 levels to CO2 emissions: Confirmation that rising carbon dioxide
levels are due to human activity comes from analysing the types of carbon found in the air. The carbon atom has several different
isotopes (eg - different number of neutrons). Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio
than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occuring
(Ghosh 2003) and the trend correlates with the trend in global emissions. Further confirmation
comes by measuring oxygen levels in the atmosphere. When fossil fuels are burned, the carbon
in the fossil fuels are joined to oxygen, creating carbon dioxide. As CO2 increases in the atmosphere, oxygen
decreases. Observations show oxygen levels are falling at a rate consistent with the burning of fossil
fuels. Satellites measure infrared radiation as it escapes out to space. A comparison between
satellite data from 1970 to 1996 found that less energy is escaping to space at the wavelengths
that greenhouse gases absorb energy (Harries 2001). Thus the paper found "direct
experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect". This result has
been confirmed by more recent data from several different satellites (Griggs 2004, Chen 2007). That less heat is escaping
out to space is confirmed by surface measurements that find more infrared radiation returning
to earth. Several studies have found this is due to an increased greenhouse effect (Philipona 2004,
Wang 2009). An analysis of high resolution spectral data allows scientists to quantitatively attribute the increase in downward
radiation to each of several greenhouse gases (Evans 2006). The results lead the authors to conclude that "this
experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental
evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and
global warming." Another human fingerprint can be found by looking at temperature trends in
the different layers of the atmosphere. Climate models predict that more carbon dioxide should
cause warming in the troposphere but cooling in the stratosphere. This is because the increased
"blanketing" effect in the troposphere holds in more heat, allowing less to reach the
stratosphere. This is in contrast to the expected effect if global warming was caused by the sun
which would cause warming both in the troposphere and stratosphere. What we observe from
both satellites and weather balloons is a cooling stratosphere and warming troposphere,
consistent with carbon dioxide warming: If an increased greenhouse effect was causing
warming, we would expect nights to warm faster than days. This is because the greenhouse
effect operates day and night. Conversely, if global warming was caused by the sun, we would
expect the warming trend to be greatest in daytime temperatures. What we observe is a
decrease in cold nights greater than the decrease in cold days, and an increase in warm nights
greater than the increase in warm days (Alexander 2006, Fan 2010). This is consistent with
greenhouse warming.


Overwhelming qualified consensus proves warming human induced
Cook at al 13 (John 18 January 2013 Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia Dana Nuccitelli Skeptical
Science, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Sarah A Green School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia Mark
Richardson Tetra Tech, Incorporated, McClellan, CA, USA Barbel Winkler Department of Chemistry, Michigan Technological
University, USA Rob Painting Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK Robert Way Department of Geography,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Peter Jacobs Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason
University, USA Andrew Skuce Salt Spring Consulting Ltd, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic
global warming in the scientific literature http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf/1748-9326_8_2_024024.pdf)
We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in
the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 19912011
matching the topics global climate change or global warming. We find that 66.4% of
abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3%
were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on
AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a
second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract
ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%).
Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For
both abstract ratings and authors self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers
expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the
number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the
published research


Most qualified and vast amount of experts agree warming is anthropogenic
Cook at al 13 (John 18 January 2013 Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia Dana Nuccitelli Skeptical
Science, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Sarah A Green School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia Mark
Richardson Tetra Tech, Incorporated, McClellan, CA, USA Barbel Winkler Department of Chemistry, Michigan Technological
University, USA Rob Painting Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK Robert Way Department of Geography,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Peter Jacobs Department of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason
University, USA Andrew Skuce Salt Spring Consulting Ltd, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic
global warming in the scientific literature http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf/1748-9326_8_2_024024.pdf)

The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186),
not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11 944 papers
written by 29 083 authors and published in 1980 journals. To simplify the analysis, ratings were
consolidated into three groups: endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 13 in
table 2 ), no position (category 4) and rejections (including implicit and explicit; categories 57).
We examined four metrics to quantify the level of endorsement: (1) The percentage of
endorsements/rejections/undecideds among all abstracts. (2) The percentage of
endorsements/rejections/undecideds among only those abstracts expressing a position on AGW.
(3) The percentage of scientists authoring endorsement/ rejection abstracts among all scientists.
(4) The same percentage among only those scientists who expressed a position on AGW (table 3
). 3.1. Endorsement percentages from abstract ratings Among abstracts that expressed a
position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a
position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.

Real
Warming is real anthropogenic CO2 overwhelms natural causes
Hansen, environmental science professor, et al., 13 [J. Hansen and Makiko Sato, NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University adjunct professor of Earth and Environmental Science; and Reto Ruedy,
Trinnovim Goddard Center scientific support, 1/15/13, Global Temperature Update Through 2012,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf, accessed 1/19/13, JTF] *Climate forcing an
imposed perturbation of the planet's energy balance that would tend to alter global temperature. *El Nino oceanic oscillation that
tends to increase surface temperature * El Nina oceanic oscillation that decreases surface temperature

Global surface temperature in 2012 was +0.56C (1F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period
average, despite much of the year being affected by a strong La Nina. Global temperature thus continues
at a high level that is sufficient to cause a substantial increase in the frequency of extreme
warm anomalies. The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we
interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net
climate forcing. An update through 2012 of our global analysis 1 (Fig. 1) reveals 2012 as having practically the same
temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010. These short-term global fluctuations
are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures
summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is
indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10
warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998. The long-term warming trend, including
continual warming since the mid-1970s, has been conclusively associated with the predominant global
climate forcing, human-made greenhouse gases 2, which began to grow substantially early in
the 20th century. The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an
approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with
little control on particulate air pollution, but satisfactory quantitative interpretation has been impossible
because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements 3,4. Below we discuss the contributions to
temperature change in the past decade from stochastic (unforced) climate variability and from climate forcings. The most extreme
temperature anomalies in 2012, exceeding 2.5C (4.5F) on annual mean, occurred in the Arctic and in the middle of North America
(Fig. 2). The large springtime heat anomaly in North America dried out the soil in a large part of the United States, thus leaving little
soil moisture to provide evaporative cooling in the summer. The summer temperature anomaly was smaller than in the prior two
seasons, but summer temperature variability is smaller than in the other seasons, so the 2012 summer anomaly was also unusually
large as described in NOAA reports 6. The New Climate Dice. The high current global temperature is sufficient
to have a noticeable effect on the frequency of occurrence of extreme warm anomalies. The left-
most "bell curve" in Fig. 3 is the frequency distribution of summer-average temperature anomalies during the base period 1951-
1980, in units of the local standard deviation 1 of seasonal-average temperature. The observational data show that
the frequency of unusually warm anomalies has been increasing decade by decade over the
past three decades. Perhaps the most important change is the emergence of extremely hot outliers, defined as anomalies
exceeding 3 standard deviations. Such extreme summer heat anomalies occurred in 2010 over a large region in Eastern Europe
including Moscow, in 2011 in Oklahoma, Texas and Northern Mexico, and in 2012 in the United States in part of the central Rockies
and Great Plains. The location of these extreme anomalies is dependent upon variable meteorological patterns, but the
decade-by-decade movement of the bell curve to the right, and the emergence of an
increased number of extreme warm anomalies, is an expression of increasing global warming.
Some seasons continue to be unusually cool even by the standard of average 1951-1980 climate, but the "climate dice" are now
sufficiently loaded that an observant person should notice that unusually warm seasons are occurring much more frequently than
they did a few decades earlier. Global Warming Standstill. The 5-year running mean of global temperature has been flat for the past
decade. It should be noted that the "standstill" temperature is at a much higher level than existed at
any year in the prior decade except for the single year 1998, which had the strongest El Nino of the century. However,
the standstill has led to a widespread assertion that "global warming has stopped". Examination of
this matter requires consideration of the principal climate forcing mechanisms that can drive climate change and the effects of
stochastic (unforced) climate variability. The climate forcing 2 most often cited as a likely natural cause of
global temperature change is solar variability. The sun's irradiance began to be measured
precisely from satellites in the late 1970s, thus quantifying well the variation of solar energy
reaching Earth (Fig. 4). The irradiance change associated with the 10-13 year sunspot cycle is
about 0.1%. Given the ~240 W/m 2 of solar energy absorbed by Earth, this solar cycle variation is about 1/4 W/m 2 averaged
over the planet. Although it is too early to know whether the maximum of the present solar cycle has been reached, the recent
prolonged solar minimum assures that there is a recent downward trend in decadal solar
irradiance , which may be a decrease of the order of 0.1 W/m 2. Although several hypotheses have been made for how the
solar irradiance variations could be magnified by indirect effects, no convincing confirmation of indirect forcings
has been found except for a very small amplifying effect via changes of stratospheric ozone. The largest climate
forcing is caused by increasing greenhouse gases, principally CO2 (Fig. 5). The annual increment in the
greenhouse gas forcing (Fig. 5) has declined from about 0.05 W/m 2 in the 1980s to about 0.035 W/m 2 in recent years 8. The
decline is primarily a consequence of successful phaseout of ozone-depleting gases and reduction of the growth rate of methane.
Also, the airborne fraction of fossil fuel CO2 emissions has declined and the forcing per CO2 increment declines slowly as CO2
increases due to partial saturation of absorption bands, so the CO2 forcing growth rate has been steady despite the rapid growth of
fossil fuel emissions. The second largest human-made forcing is probably atmospheric aerosols, although the aerosol forcing is
extremely uncertain 3,4. Our comparison of the various forcings (Fig. 6a) shows the aerosol forcing estimated by Hansen et al. 9 up
to 1990; for later dates it assumes that the aerosol forcing increment is half as large as the greenhouse gas forcing but opposite in
sign. This aerosol forcing can be described as an educated guess. If the aerosol forcing has thusly become more negative in the past
decade, the sum of the known climate forcings has little net change in the past few decades (Fig. 6b). The increased (negative)
aerosol forcing is plausible, given the increased global use of coal during this period, but the indicated quantification is arbitrary,
given the absence of aerosol measurements of the needed accuracy. Even if the aerosol forcing has remained unchanged in the past
decade, the dashed line in Fig. 6b shows that the total climate forcing increased at a slower rate in the past
decade than in the prior three decades. The slight growth in the past decade is due to a
combination of factors: solar irradiance decline, slight increase of stratospheric aerosols, and
the lower growth rate of greenhouse gas forcing compared with the 1970s and 1980s. A slower growth rate of the
net climate forcing may have contributed to the standstill of global temperature in the past decade, but it cannot explain the
standstill, because it is known that the planet has been out of energy balance, more energy coming in
from the sun than energy being radiated to space. 10 The planetary energy imbalance is due
largely to the increase of climate forcings in prior decades and the great thermal inertia of the ocean. The more
important factor in the standstill is probably unforced dynamical variability, essentially climatic "noise". Indeed, the current stand-
still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the fact that the first half of the past 10 years
had predominately El Nino conditions, while the second half had predominately La Nina conditions (Nino index in Fig. 1). Comparing
the global temperature at the time of the most recent three La Ninas (1999-2000, 2008, and 2011-2012), it is apparent that
global temperature has continued to rise between recent years of comparable tropical
temperature, indeed, at a rate of warming similar to that of the previous three decades. We
conclude that background global warming is continuing, consistent with the known planetary energy imbalance,
even though it is likely that the slowdown in climate forcing growth rate contributed to the
recent apparent standstill in global temperature. Climate Change Expectations. It is relevant to comment on
expectations about near-term climate change, especially because it seems likely that solar irradiance observations are in the process
of confirming that solar irradiance has weakened modestly over the latest solar cycle. If solar irradiance were the
dominant drive of climate change that most global warming contrarians believe, then a global cooling trend
might be expected. On the contrary, however, the continuing planetary energy imbalance and
the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use assure that global warming will
continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature
change of the past decade, suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves
inevitably into the next El Nino phase.

Defer to consensus thats a framing issue
Anderegg, DoE fellow, et al. 10 [William R.L., Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellow, Ph.D.
Candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University (where he studies the effects of climate change on
forests); James W. Prall, Senior Systems Programmer in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at the University of Toronto; Jacob Harold, Philanthropy Program Officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and Stephen
H. Schneider, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Plasma Physics from Columbia University, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for
Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, Professor of Biology at Stanford, Professor (by courtesy) of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Stanford, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford, awarded the
American Association for the Advancement of Science/ Westinghouse Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology;
7/6/10, Expert credibility in climate change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,
Volume 107, Number 27, pp. 12107-12109, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2901439/] *ACC = Anthropogenic
Climate Change, CE = Convinced by the Evidence, UE = unconvinced by the evidence,

Preliminary reviews of scientific literature and surveys of climate scientists indicate striking
agreement with the primary conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC): anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for most of the
unequivocal warming of the Earth's average global temperature over the second half of the
20th century (13). Nonetheless, substantial and growing public doubt remains about the anthropogenic cause and scientific
agreement about the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in climate change (4, 5). A vocal minority of researchers and other
critics contest the conclusions of the mainstream scientific assessment, frequently citing large numbers of scientists whom they
believe support their claims (68). This group, often termed climate change skeptics, contrarians, or deniers, has received large
amounts of media attention and wields significant influence in the societal debate about climate change impacts and policy (7, 9
14). An extensive literature examines what constitutes expertise or credibility in technical and policy-relevant scientific research
(15). Though our aim is not to expand upon that literature here, we wish to draw upon several important observations from this
literature in examining expert credibility in climate change. First, though the degree of contextual, political, epistemological, and
cultural influences in determining who counts as an expert and who is credible remains debated, many scholars
acknowledge the need to identify credible experts and account for expert opinion in technical
(e.g., science-based) decision-making (1519). Furthermore, delineating expertise and the
relative credibility of claims is critical, especially in areas where it may be difficult for the
majority of decision-makers and the lay public to evaluate the full complexities of a technical
issue (12, 15). Ultimately, however, societal decisions regarding response to ACC must necessarily include input from many diverse
and nonexpert stakeholders. Because the timeline of decision-making is often more rapid than scientific consensus, examining the
landscape of expert opinion can greatly inform such decision-making (15, 19). Here, we examine a metric of climate-specific
expertise and a metric of overall scientific prominence as two dimensions of expert credibility in two groups of researchers. We
provide a broad assessment of the relative credibility of researchers convinced by the
evidence (CE) of ACC and those unconvinced by the evidence (UE) of ACC. Our consideration of UE
researchers differs from previous work on climate change skeptics and contrarians in that we primarily focus on researchers that
have published extensively in the climate field, although we consider all skeptics/contrarians that have signed prominent statements
concerning ACC (68). Such expert analysis can illuminate public and policy discussions about ACC and the extent of consensus in the
expert scientific community. We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers based on
authorship of scientific assessment reports and membership on multisignatory statements
about ACC (SI Materials and Methods). We tallied the number of climate-relevant publications
authored or coauthored by each researcher (defined here as expertise) and counted the
number of citations for each of the researcher's four highest-cited papers (defined here as
prominence) using Google Scholar. We then imposed an a priori criterion that a researcher
must have authored a minimum of 20 climate publications to be considered a climate
researcher, thus reducing the database to 908 researchers. Varying this minimum publication cutoff did not
materially alter results (Materials and Methods). We ranked researchers based on the total number of climate publications
authored. Though our compiled researcher list is not comprehensive nor designed to be representative of the entire climate science
community, we have drawn researchers from the most high-profile reports and public statements about ACC. Therefore, we have
likely compiled the strongest and most credentialed researchers in CE and UE groups. Citation and publication analyses must be
treated with caution in inferring scientific credibility, but we suggest that our methods and our expertise and prominence criteria
provide conservative, robust, and relevant indicators of relative credibility of CE and UE groups of climate researchers (Materials and
Methods). Go to: Results and Discussion The UE group comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate
researchers as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of researchers of the top 100,
and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding researchers present in both groups (Materials and Methods). This result closely
agrees with expert surveys, indicating that 97% of self-identified actively publishing climate
scientists agree with the tenets of ACC (2). Furthermore, this finding complements direct polling of
the climate researcher community, which yields qualitative and self-reported researcher
expertise (2). Our findings capture the added dimension of the distribution of researcher expertise, quantify agreement among
the highest expertise climate researchers, and provide an independent assessment of level of scientific consensus concerning ACC. In
addition to the striking difference in number of expert researchers between CE and UE groups, the distribution of expertise of the UE
group is far below that of the CE group (Fig. 1). Mean expertise of the UE group was around half (60 publications) that of the CE
group (119 publications; MannWhitney U test: W = 57,020; P < 10
14
), as was median expertise (UE = 34 publications; CE = 84
publications). Furthermore, researchers with fewer than 20 climate publications comprise 80% the UE group, as opposed to less
than 10% of the CE group. This indicates that the bulk of UE researchers on the most prominent multisignatory statements about
climate change have not published extensively in the peer-reviewed climate literature. We examined a subsample of
the 50 most-published (highest-expertise) researchers from each group. Such subsampling facilitates
comparison of relative expertise between groups (normalizing differences between absolute numbers). This method reveals
large differences in relative expertise between CE and UE groups (Fig. 2). Though the top-
published researchers in the CE group have an average of 408 climate publications (median =
344), the top UE researchers average only 89 publications (median = 68; MannWhitney U
test: W = 2,455; P < 1015). Thus, this suggests that not all experts are equal, and top CE researchers have
much stronger expertise in climate science than those in the top UE group. Finally, our prominence
criterion provides an independent and approximate estimate of the relative scientific significance of CE and UE publications. Citation
analysis complements publication analysis because it can, in general terms, capture the quality and impact of a researcher's
contributiona critical component to overall scientific credibilityas opposed to measuring a researcher's involvement in a field, or
expertise (Materials and Methods). The citation analysis conducted here further complements the publication analysis because it
does not examine solely climate-relevant publications and thus captures highly prominent researchers who may not be directly
involved with the climate field. We examined the top four most-cited papers for each CE and UE researcher with 20 or more
climate publications and found immense disparity in scientific prominence between CE and UE communities (MannWhitney U test:
W = 50,710; P < 10
6
; Fig. 3). CE researchers top papers were cited an average of 172 times, compared
with 105 times for UE researchers. Because a single, highly cited paper does not establish a
highly credible reputation but might instead reflect the controversial nature of that paper
(often called the single-paper effect), we also considered the average the citation count of the
second through fourth most-highly cited papers of each researcher. Results were robust when only these
papers were considered (CE mean: 133; UE mean: 84; MannWhitney U test: W = 50,492; P < 10
6
). Results were robust when all
1,372 researchers, including those with fewer than 20 climate publications, were considered (CE mean: 126; UE mean: 59; Mann
Whitney U test: W = 3.5 105; P < 10
15
). Number of citations is an imperfect but useful benchmark for a group's scientific
prominence (Materials and Methods), and we show here that even considering all (e.g., climate and nonclimate) publications, the
UE researcher group has substantially lower prominence than the CE group. We provide a large-scale quantitative assessment of
the relative level of agreement, expertise, and prominence in the climate researcher community. We show that the expertise
and prominence, two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers
convinced by the evidence of ACC vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and
contrarians. This divide is even starker when considering the top researchers in each group. Despite media tendencies to
present both sides in ACC debates (9), which can contribute to continued public misunderstanding regarding ACC (7, 11, 12, 14), not
all climate researchers are equal in scientific credibility and expertise in the climate system. This extensive analysis of the
mainstream versus skeptical/contrarian researchers suggests a strong role for considering expert credibility in the relative weight of
and attention to these groups of researchers in future discussions in media, policy, and public forums regarding anthropogenic
climate change.

CO2 is the cause
Levy 12 *Dawn Levy, author at ORLCF, 4/4/12, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Carbon Dioxide Caused Global
Warming at Ice Ages End, Pioneering Simulation Shows, http://www.olcf.ornl.gov/2012/04/04/carbon-dioxide-caused-global-
warming-at-ice-ages-end-pioneering-simulation-shows/]

Climate science has an equivalent to the what came firstthe chicken or the egg? question: What came first,
greenhouse gases or global warming? A multi-institutional team led by researchers at
Harvard, Oregon State University, and the University of Wisconsin used a global dataset of
paleoclimate records and the Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
to find the answer (spoiler alert: carbon dioxide drives warming). The results, published in the
April 5 issue of Nature, analyze 15,000 years of climate history. Scientists hope amassing knowledge of the
causes of natural global climate change will aid understanding of human-caused climate change. We constructed the
first-ever record of global temperature spanning the end of the last ice age based on 80 proxy
temperature records from around the world, said Jeremy Shakun, a National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellow at
Harvard and Columbia Universities and first author of the paper. Its no small task to get at global mean temperature.
Even for studies of the present day you need lots of locations, quality-controlled data, careful statistics. For the past 21,000 years,
its even harder. But because the data set is large enough, these proxy data provide a reasonable estimate of global mean
temperature. Proxy records from around the worldderived from ice cores and ocean and lake
sedimentsprovide estimates of local surface temperature throughout history, and carbon-14
dating indicates when those temperatures occurred. For example, water molecules harboring the oxygen-18
isotope rain out faster than those containing oxygen-16 as an air mass cools, so the ratio of these isotopes in glacial ice layers tells
scientists how cold it was when the snow fell. Likewise, the amount of magnesium incorporated into the shells of marine plankton
depends on the temperature of the water they live in, and these shells get preserved on the seafloor when they die. The authors
combined these local temperature records to produce a reconstruction of global mean temperature. Additionally, samples of
ancient atmosphere are trapped as air bubbles in glaciers, providing a direct measure of carbon dioxide levels through time that
could be compared to the global temperature record. Being the first to reconstruct global mean
temperatures throughout this time interval allowed the researchers to show what many
suspected but none could yet prove: This is the first paper to definitively show the role
carbon dioxide played in helping to end the last ice age, said Shakun, who co-wrote the paper with Peter
Clark of Oregon State University. We found that global temperature mirrored and generally lagged
behind rising carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation, which points to carbon dioxide as
the major driver of global warming. Prior results based on Antarctic ice cores had indicated that local temperatures
in Antarctica started warming before carbon dioxide began rising, which implied that carbon dioxide was a feedback to some other
leading driver of warming. The delay of global temperature behind carbon dioxide found in this study, however, shows that the ice-
core perspective does not apply to the globe as a whole and instead suggests that carbon dioxide was the primary driver of
worldwide warming. While the geologic record showed a remarkable correlation between carbon
dioxide and global temperature, the researchers also turned to state-of-the-art model
simulations to further pin down the direction of causation suggested by the temperature lag.
Jaguar recently ran approximately 14 million processor hours to simulate the most recent
21,000 years of Earths climate. Feng He of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a postdoctoral researcher, plugged
the main forcings driving global climate over this time interval into an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)class
model called the Community Climate System Model version 3, a global climate model that couples interactions between
atmosphere, oceans, lands, and sea ice. The climate science community developed the model with
support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and
National Aeronautics and Space Administration and used many codes developed by university
researchers. Our model results are the first IPCC-class Coupled General Circulation Model
(CGCM) simulation of such a long duration (15,000 years), said He, who conducted the modeling with
Zhengyu Liu of the University of WisconsinMadison and Bette Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR). This is of particular significance to the climate community because it shows, for the first time, that at least one of the
CGCMs used to predict future climate is capable of reproducing both the timing and amplitude of climate evolution seen in the past
under realistic climate forcing.

Its faster than expected
Perkins, earth science writer, 12 [Sid, earth science writer for Science News, 3/25/12, Earth Warming Faster
Than Expected, Science News, http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/03/earth-warming-faster-than-expected.html]

By 2050, global average temperature could be between 1.4C and 3C warmer than it was just
a couple of decades ago, according to a new study that seeks to address the largest sources of
uncertainty in current climate models. That's substantially higher than estimates produced by
other climate analyses, suggesting that Earth's climate could warm much more quickly than
previously thought. Many factors affect global and regional climate, including planet-warming "greenhouse" gases, solar
activity, light-scattering atmospheric pollutants, and heat transfer among the land, sea, and air, to name just a few. There are so
many influences to consider that it makes determining the effect of any one factordespite years and sometimes decades of
measurementsdifficult. Daniel Rowlands, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford in the
United Kingdom, and his colleagues took a stab at addressing the largest sources of short-term climate
uncertainty by modifying a version of one climate model used by the United Kingdom's meteorological agency. In their study, the
researchers tweaked the parameters that influence three factors in the model: the sensitivity
of climate to changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the rate at
which oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, and the amount of cooling from light-
scattering aerosols in the atmosphere. Then the team analyzed the results of thousands of
climate simulationseach of which had a slightly different combination of parametersthat
covered the years between 1920 and 2080, Rowlands says. All of the simulations assumed that
future concentrations of greenhouse gases would rise from today's 392 parts per million to
520 ppm by 2050. Each of the runs also allowed for variations in solar activity (which would affect how much the sun's
radiation warms Earth) and rates of volcanic activity (which would influence the concentrations of planet-cooling sulfate aerosols in
the atmosphere). The team discarded results of simulations that didn't match observations of
regional climate in more than 20 land areas and ocean basins from 1960 to today. Of those that
passed this test, those considered statistically most likelythe two-thirds of those that best matched previous
climate observationssuggest that global average temperature in 2050 will be between 1.4C and
3C warmer than the global average measured between 1961 and 1990. All of the simulations that
matched recent climate patterns suggested warming would be at least 1C, the researchers report online today in Nature
Geoscience. The higher end of the team's range of likely warming scenarios is between 0.5C and
0.75C warmer than the scenarios published in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, Rowlands says. "These sorts of numbers haven't been seen in other
complex climate models."

Our models are good
The Economist 11 [The Economist, 10/22/11, The heat is on, http://www.economist.com/node/21533360+

FOR those who question whether global warming is really happening, it is necessary to believe that the instrumental temperature
record is wrong. That is a bit easier than you might think. There are three compilations of mean global
temperatures, each one based on readings from thousands of thermometers, kept in weather
stations and aboard ships, going back over 150 years. Two are American, provided by NASA and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one is a collaboration between Britain's Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climate
Research Unit (known as Hadley CRU). And all suggest a similar pattern of warming: amounting to about
0.9C over land in the past half century. To most scientists, that is consistent with the
manifold other indicators of warmingrising sea-levels, melting glaciers, warmer ocean
depths and so forthand convincing. Yet the consistency among the three compilations masks large
uncertainties in the raw data on which they are based. Hence the doubts, husbanded by many eager
sceptics, about their accuracy. A new study, however, provides further evidence that the numbers
are probably about right. The uncertainty arises mainly because weather stations were never
intended to provide a climatic record. The temperature series they give tend therefore to be patchy and even where
the stations are relatively abundant, as in western Europe and America, they often contain inconsistencies. They may have gaps, or
readings taken at different times of day, or with different kinds of thermometer. The local environment may have changed.
Extrapolating a global average from such data involves an amount of tinkeringor homogenisation. It might involve omitting
especially awkward readings; or where, for example, a heat source like an airport has sprung up alongside a weather station,
inputting a lower temperature than the data show. As such cases are mostly in the earlier portions of the records, this will
exaggerate the long-term warming trend. That is at best imperfect. And for thoseincluding Rick Perry, the Republican governor of
Texas and would-be president who claim to see global warming as a hoax by grant-hungry scientists, it may look like a smoking
gun. To build confidence in their methodologies, NASA and NOAA already publish their data
and algorithms. Hadley CRU is now doing so. A grander solution, outlined in a forthcoming Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society, would be to provide a single online databank of all temperature data
and analysis. Part of the point would be to encourage more scientists and statisticians to test the existing analysesand a group
backed by Novim, a research outfit in Santa Barbara, California, has recently done just that. Inconvenient data
Marshalled by an astrophysicist, Richard Muller, this group, which calls itself the Berkeley
Earth Surface Temperature, is notable in several ways. When embarking on the project 18 months ago, its members
(including Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics this month for his work on dark energy) were mostly new to climate
science. And Dr Muller, for one, was mildly sceptical of its findings. This was partly, he says, because of climategate: the 2009
revelation of e-mails from scientists at CRU which suggested they had sometimes taken steps to disguise their adjustments of
inconvenient palaeo-data. With this reputation, the Berkeley Earth team found it unusually easy to attract sponsors, including a
donation of $150,000 from the Koch Foundation. Yet Berkeley Earth's results, as described in four papers
currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the
existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land
surface warmed by 0.911C: a mere 2% less than NOAA's estimate. That is despite its use of a
novel methodologydesigned, at least in part, to address the concerns of what Dr Muller terms legitimate
sceptics. Most important, Berkeley Earth sought an alternative way to deal with awkward
data. Its algorithm attaches an automatic weighting to every data point, according to its
consistency with comparable readings. That should allow for the inclusion of outlandish
readings without distorting the result. (Except where there seems to be straightforward confusion between Celsius and
Fahrenheit, which is corrected.) By avoiding traditional procedures that require long, continuous data segments, the Berkeley Earth
methodology can also accommodate unusually short sequences: for example, those provided by temporary weather stations. This is
another innovation that allows it to work with both more and less data than the existing compilations, with varying degrees of
certainty. It is therefore able to compile an earlier record than its predecessors, starting from 1800. (As there were only two weather
stations in America, a handful in Europe and one in Asia for some of that time, it has a high degree of uncertainty.) To test the new
technique, however, much of the analysis uses the same data as NOAA and NASA. Heat maps In another apparent
innovation, the Berkeley team has written into its analysis a geospatial technique, known as
kriging, which uses the basic spatial correlations in weather to estimate the temperature at
points between weather stations. This promises to provide a more nuanced heat map than
presented in the existing compilations, which either consign an average temperature to an area defined by a grid
square or, in the case of NASA, attempt a less ambitious interpolation. It will be interesting to see whether this makes it past the
review process. Peter Thorne, a climatologist at the Co-operative Institute for Climate and Satellites, in North Carolina, describes it
as quite a hard sell in periods that are data sparse. He adds: That doesn't mean you can't do it. It means you've got to prove it
works. Two of the Berkeley Earth papers address narrower concerns. One is the poor location
of many weather stations. A crowd-sourcing campaign by a meteorologist and blogger, Anthony Watts, established that
most of America's stations are close enough to asphalt, buildings or other heat sources to give
artificially high readings. The other is the additional warming seen in built-up areas, known as
the urban heat-island effect. Many sceptics fear that, because roughly half of all weather stations are in built-up
areas, this may have inflated estimates of a temperature rise. The Berkeley Earth papers
suggest their analysis is able to accommodate these biases. That is a notable, though not
original, achievement. Previous peer-reviewed studiesincluding one on the location of
weather stations co-authored by Mr Wattshave suggested the mean surface temperatures
provided by NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU are also not significantly affected by them. Yet the
Berkeley Earth study promises to be valuable. It is due to be published online with a vast trove of supporting data, merged from 15
separate sources, with duplications and other errors clearly signalled. At a time of exaggerated doubts about the instrumental
temperature record, this should help promulgate its main conclusion: that the existing mean estimates are in the
right ballpark. That means the world is warming fast.

Warmings real oceans prove.
Nuccitelli 4/24 environmental scientist, MA in physics and climate researcher (Dana, Why is Reuters puzzled by global
warmings acceleration?, 4/24/13; < http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-
cent/2013/apr/24/reuters-puzzled-global-warming-acceleration>)//Beddow
The rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade is equivalent to detonating about 4
Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Take a moment to visualize 4 atomic bomb detonations happening every single
second. That's the global warming that we're frequently told isn't happening. There are periods when the ocean heats up more
quickly than the surface, and other periods when the surface heats up more quickly than the oceans. Right now we're in a
period of fast ocean warming and overall, global warming is continuing at a very fast pace. The
confusion on this subject lies in the fact that only about 2 percent of global warming is used in
heating air, whereas about 90 percent of global warming goes into heating the oceans (the rest
heats ice and land masses). But humans live at the Earth's surface, and thus we tend to focus on surface
temperatures. Over the past 1015 years, Earth's surface temperature has continued to rise, but
slowly. At the same time, the warming of the oceans and the warming of the Earth as a whole
has accelerated. This was the conclusion of a scientific paper I co-authored last year, in which our team found more
overall global warming (of the oceans, air, land, and ice combined) over the past 15 years than
during the prior 15 years. Just recently, another paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that
the warming of the oceans since the turn of the century has been the most sustained in the past
50 years. They also found that, consistent with my team's research, about 30% of overall global warming has
gone into the deep oceans below 700 meters due to changing wind patterns and ocean currents. This
accelerated deep ocean warming is also unprecedented in the past 50 years. We often hear
from the media that the (surface air) warming has slowed or paused over the past 15 years. This
isn't a puzzle; climate scientists are well aware of several contributing factors, as a recent Reuters article "Climate scientists
struggle to explain warming slowdown" eventually discussed. The accelerated warming of the oceans is likely
the main contributor. During years with La Nia events, more heat is transferred to the oceans, and
surface temperatures are relatively cool as a result. The opposite is true during El Nio years. During the 1990s,
there were more El Nio than La Nia events, which resulted in more surface air warming. One of the strongest El Nio
events of the century happened in 1998, which not coincidentally was 15 years ago. When
people say 'no warming in 15 years', they're cherry picking the timeframe to begin in an
abnormally hot year. It's like arguing that your car must have broken down because it hasn't moved in the 15 seconds while
you've been stopped at a red light. The argument selects a short timeframe that's not representative of
the whole. Since 2000, there has been a preponderance of La Nia events, which has acted to
temporarily bury more global warming in the oceans. A new study published in Nature Climate Change found
that by taking into account the short-term changes caused by factors like El Nio and La Nia cycles, they could accurately forecast
the slowed warming at the surface several years in advance. The paper concluded, "Our results hence point at the key role of the
ocean heat uptake in the recent warming slowdown." Reuters did not talk to the authors of this study, or ask any other climate
scientists about this surface warming slowdown that they're supposed to be puzzled about. Actually that's not quite true. Just a
week earlier, Reuters interviewed the lead author of that paper in an article with the headline "Oceans may explain
slowdown in climate change". The article noted, "Experts in France and Spain said on Sunday that the oceans took up
more warmth from the air around 2000. That would help explain the slowdown in surface warming but would also suggest that the
pause may be only temporary and brief." Reuters didn't connect the dots between these two articles, telling us one week that
oceans help explain the surface warming slowdown, and the next week claiming the slowdown is puzzling climate scientists.
However, these 'slowdowns' happen on a regular basis. You can find one every 5 to 10 years in the surface temperature data, as
illustrated in a graphic I created nicknamed 'The Escalator'. During periods with more La Nias, surface temperatures temporarily
flatten out. But global warming does not. As long as humans continue to increase the greenhouse effect by
burning massive quantities of fossil fuels, the planet will continue to warm, as is clear from the
acceleration of global warming since 2000.


Warming now the oceans have slowed it down but well hit the tipping point
soon.
Doyle 4/7 Environmental Correspondent for Reuters (Alister, Oceans may explain slowdown in climate change: study,
4/7/13; < http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/07/us-climate-oceans-idUSBRE93608420130407>)//Beddow
(Reuters) - Climate change could get worse quickly if huge amounts of extra heat absorbed by the
oceans are released back into the air, scientists said after unveiling new research showing that oceans have
helped mitigate the effects of warming since 2000. Heat-trapping gases are being emitted into
the atmosphere faster than ever, and the 10 hottest years since records began have all taken
place since 1998. But the rate at which the earth's surface is heating up has slowed somewhat since 2000, causing scientists to
search for an explanation for the pause. Experts in France and Spain said on Sunday that the oceans took up more
warmth from the air around 2000. That would help explain the slowdown in surface warming
but would also suggest that the pause may be only temporary and brief. "Most of this excess energy
was absorbed in the top 700 meters (2,300 ft) of the ocean at the onset of the warming pause, 65 percent of it in the tropical Pacific
and Atlantic oceans," they wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change. Lead author Virginie Guemas of the Catalan Institute of
Climate Sciences in Barcelona said the hidden heat may return to the atmosphere in the next decade,
stoking warming again. "If it is only related to natural variability then the rate of warming will
increase soon," she told Reuters. Caroline Katsman of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, an expert who was not
involved in the latest study, said heat absorbed by the ocean will come back into the atmosphere if it is part of an ocean cycle such
as the "El Nino" warming and "La Nina" cooling events in the Pacific. She said the study broadly confirmed earlier research by her
institute but that it was unlikely to be the full explanation of the warming pause at the surface, since it only applied to the onset of
the slowdown around 2000.


Global warmings real and accelerating ocean data overwhelms their defense.
Nuccitelli 3/25 - Environmental scientist, MA in physics and climate researcher (Dana, New Research Confirms Global
Warming Has Accelerated 3/25/13; < http://www.skepticalscience.com/new-research-confirms-global-warming-has-
accelerated.html>)//Beddow
A new study of ocean warming has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Klln (2013).
There are several important conclusions which can be drawn from this paper. Completely contrary to the popular
contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past
15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into
heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically. As suspected, much of the
'missing heat' Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans.
Consistent with the results of Nuccitelli et al. (2012), this study finds that 30% of the ocean warming over the past
decade has occurred in the deeper oceans below 700 meters, which they note is unprecedented over at least
the past half century. Some recent studies have concluded based on the slowed global surface warming over the past decade that
the sensitivity of the climate to the increased greenhouse effect is somewhat lower than the
IPCC best estimate. Those studies are fundamentally flawed because they do not account for the
warming of the deep oceans. The slowed surface air warming over the past decade has lulled
many people into a false and unwarranted sense of security.


Warming now
Lefeber 8/24/2012 (Rene DOCTOR CHAIR IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Polar Warming: An Opportune
Inconveniencehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151241

It is expected that some time this century the geographical North Pole will no longer be
covered with ice at the end of the Arctic Summer. This may already happen for the first time
at the end of this decade. The amount of sea ice at the end of the Arctic Summer of 2011 (4.6
million km2) was more than 40% less than at the end of the Arctic Summer of 1980 (7.8 million
km2), which was almost 30% below the long-term average of the period 1979-2010.2
Considerable parts of the land mass of Greenland, in particular the coastal areas, and Antarctica,
in particular the Antarctic Peninsula, are expected to become ice free in summer time within
the foreseeable future. The number of icebergs will increase even though they will melt faster
as a result of global warming. Icebergs pose a threat for the sea routes in the Polar Regions
which will be used more intensively, but the seriousness of this threat will depend on the
melting velocity, the direction of winds and currents, and the use of detection methods that are
more advanced than at the time of the sinking of the RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912.


Temperatures rising now
Lefeber 8/24/2012 (Rene DOCTOR CHAIR IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Polar Warming: An Opportune
Inconveniencehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151241

The consequences of climate change for the Polar Regions are relatively big due to the
vulnerability of the ecosystems of these regions. Furthermore, the beneficial and adverse
consequences of climate change will manifest themselves sooner in the Polar Regions due to
the relatively fast increase of average temperatures in these regions. This will not only create
opportunities for new human activities in the Polar Regions (see Section 1), but will also
impact on existing activities in these regions. The development of new activities as well as the
continuation or discontinuation of existing activities requires the implementation of adaptation
measures. These measures concern in particular the adjustment to changes in the polar
cryosphere, in particular the loss of ice cover: glaciers will melt faster; permafrost will thaw;
the total surface covered by sea ice, land ice and snow will decrease; parts of the remaining
surface will become ice free earlier in the season and for longer stretches of time; and the
remaining ice cover will become less thick (See Section 1). This will have a significant impact
on the indigenous peoples of the North Pole Region who have not significantly contributed to
climate change and lack the capacity to implement adaptation measures. The indigenous
peoples will have to appeal to the authorities of the states in which they reside. International
funding instruments are not available to finance the development of an adaptation policy and
the implementation of adaptation measures in the Polar Regions. This would require access of
indigenous peoples to the financial resources of the Adaptation Fund of the Kyoto Protocol or
the Green Climate Fund of the Climate Change Convention that currently only envisages the
financing of adaptation measures in developing countries


Warming now global temperature continues to increase
KOCH, BOWES, CLIFFROSS, and ZHANG 13 (MARGUERITE Aquatic Plant Ecology Laboratory, Department
of Biological Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, ,GEORGE Department of Biology, University of Florida, 220 Bartram Hall,
Gainesville, FL 32611, USA, Department of Biology, University of North Florida, XING-HAI Department of Biological Sciences, Florida
Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USAClimate change and ocean acidification effects on seagrasses and
marine macroalgaehttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02791.x/full)

Along with the rise in atmospheric [CO 2 ] (Fig. 1), mean global surface temperatures have
increased by ~ 0.8 C over the last century (Levitus et al. , 2001; Hansen et al. , 2006).
Reconstructed temperature data from 35 million years ago indicate that tropical to subtropical
SST ranged from 35 to 40 C when atmo- spheric [CO 2 ] was ~ 1000 ppm (Kiehl, 2011), whereas
modern day upper average temperature values are ~ 30 C. By the end of this century
temperatures are projected to increase by ~ 3 4 C (Meehl et al. , 2007); thus, the average
SST could feasibly increase to those during the Eocene. Rising SST is already causing pop-
ulation shifts in temperate and tropical macroalgal species across various biogeographic
regions (Wern- berg et al. , 2011), including economically and ecologi- cally important species,
such as kelp at the edges of their range (Liu & Pang, 2010). However, higher [CO 2 ] may
ameliorate some of the negative effects of climate change on kelp through life history
adaptations (Role- da et al. , 2012). A study of over 20 000 herbarium records of macroalgae
collected over 70 years from the Pacific and Indian oceans around the Australian coast shows
that a poleward shift of several temperate spe- cies is already occurring (Wernberg et al. , 2011).
These changes are likely to continue, and therefore an under- standing of species temperature
thresholds and mech- anisms for adaptation and interaction with elevated [DIC] would assist in
predicting future community shifts
Consensus warming now just a matter of severity
Cooper et al 13 (P.J.RSchool of Agriculture, Policy and De velopment, University of Reading,
UK R. D. Statistical Services Centre, University of Reading, UK M. Noguer and J. M. Gathenya
Walker Institute for Climate System R esearch, University of Reading, UK Climate Change
Adaptation Strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa: Foundations for the
Futurehttp://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/42002/InTech-
Climate_change_adaptation_strategies_in_sub_saharan_africa_foundations_for_the_future.pdf

To try to account for these uncertainties the IPCC, in its latest report [7], assessed results from a
range of Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCM) and provided climate
projections for the end of the 21 st Century. Projections from all these models show
substantial agreement, but as might be expe cted, there are still considerable differences
between the various models. For example, Tabl e 1 provides information for East Africa
generated from a set of 21 AOGCMs for one of the SRES emission scenarios group (the A1B
scenario) focusing on the change in climat e between the 1980 to 1999 period in the 20th
century integrations and the 2080 to 2090 peri od of A1B. Table 1 shows the minimum,
maximum, median (50%), and 25 and 75% qu artile values among the 21 models, for
temperature (C) and precipitation (%) change. Table 1. Projected climate change in East Africa
by the end of the 21st century [7] With regard to temperature there is a clear consensus
across all models that temperatures will increase, although the predic ted range is quite
large and, agriculturally speaking, very important. A rise in mean temperatures of over 4C by
2100 would have very different and much more dramatic impacts than an increase of less
than 2C. The clear consensus that we are living in a warming world has been widely
confirmed through trend analyses of long- term historical daily temperature records both
worldwide and in SSA. This is useful in that Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Su b-
Saharan Africa: Foundations for the Future 331 it provides a clear framework within which
resear ch into adaptation strategies to deal with increasing temperatures can be framed with
some degree of confidence
Their authors are paid off
Silverstein, Daily Climate, 12 [Amy, writer for Daily Climate, Authors of Wall Street Journal climate piece
downplay industry ties, http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2012/02/industry-influence]

Half of the 16 scientists who penned a controversial Wall Street Journal opinion piece proclaiming there
is "no need to panic" about global warming have ties to either the oil and gas industry or
groups dedicated to debunking climate science, a DailyClimate.org investigation has found. The article, criticized
by climate scientists and environmental groups, says that the field of climate science is dominated by opportunists and that "a large
and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed."
"Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many," the authors wrote. The Journal noted that 16 scientists co-authored the article.
But in listing their affiliations at the end of the piece, the paper didn't mention half of them have ties to groups and
businesses that often cast doubts about man-made global warming. One example: The Journal credits
William Happer as a professor of physics at Princeton University. Unmentioned is his role on the board of the George C. Marshall
Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank that assesses scientific issues impacting public policy. The institute has
long rejected that humans can influence the planet's climate. Newsweek in 2007 described the organization as a central cog in the
denial machine. The group has previously listed support from oil giant Exxon Mobil on its website.

The earth is warming short-term trends are irrelevant
Nordhaus, professor of environment, 12 [William D. Nordhaus, Professor in the School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies at Yale University, Sterling Professor of Economics, holds a Certificat from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques and
a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, served in the Panel on Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming and the Committee on the
Implications for Science and Society of Abrupt Climate Change in the National Academy of Sciences, former Provost and Vice
President for Finance and Administration at Yale, member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Carter Administration, foreign
member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, 3/22/12, Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong, The New
York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-
wrong/?pagination=false]

The first claim is that the planet is not warming. More precisely, Perhaps the most
inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. It is easy to get lost in the
tiniest details here. Most people will benefit from stepping back and looking at the record of actual
temperature measurements. The figure below shows data from 1880 to 2011 on global mean
temperature averaged from three different sources.2 We do not need any complicated statistical analysis to
see that temperatures are rising, and furthermore that they are higher in the last decade than
they were in earlier decades.3 One of the reasons that drawing conclusions on temperature
trends is tricky is that the historical temperature series is highly volatile, as can be seen in the figure.
The presence of short-term volatility requires looking at long-term trends. A useful analogy is the stock
market. Suppose an analyst says that because real stock prices have declined over the last decade (which is true), it follows that
there is no upward trend. Here again, an examination of the long-term data would quickly show this to be incorrect. The last
decade of temperature and stock market data is not representative of the longer-term
trends. The finding that global temperatures are rising over the last century-plus is one of the
most robust findings of climate science and statistics.
Its anthropogenic our models assume natural causes
Rahmstorf, ocean physics professor, 08 [Richard, Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam
University, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, Edited by Ernesto Zedillo. Anthropogenic Climate Change? Page 42-49]

It is time to address the final statement: most of the observed warming over the past fifty years is
anthropogenic. A large number of studies exist that have taken different approaches to analyze this issue, which is generally
called the "attribution problem." I do not discuss the exact share of the anthropogenic contribution (although this is an interesting
question). By "most" I imply mean "more than 50 percent. The first and crucial piece of evidence is, of course,
that the magnitude of the warming is what is expected from the anthropogenic perturbation
of the radiation balance, so anthropogenic forcing is able to explain all of the temperature
rise . As discussed here, the rise in greenhouse gases alone corresponds to 2.6 W/tn2 of forcing. This by itself,
after subtraction of the observed 0'.6 W/m2 of ocean heat uptake, would Cause 1.6C of warming since preindustrial times
for medium climate sensitivity (3"C). With a current "best guess'; aerosol forcing of 1 W/m2, the expected warming is O.8c. The
point here is not that it is possible to obtain the 'exact observed number-this is fortuitous because the amount of aerosol' forcing is
still very' uncertain-but that the expected magnitude is roughly right. There can be little doubt that the anthropogenic forcing is
large enough to explain most of the warming. Depending on aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity, it could
explain a large fraction of the warming, or all of it, or even more warming than has been observed (leaving room
for natural processes to counteract some of the warming). The second important piece of evidence is clear: there is no
viable alternative explanation . In the scientific literature, no serious alternative hypothesis
has been proposed to explain the observed global warming. Other possible causes, such as solar activity,
volcanic activity, cosmic rays, or orbital cycles, are well observed, but they do not show trends
capable of explaining the observed warming. Since 1978, solar irradiance has been measured directly from
satellites and shows the well-known eleven-year solar cycle, but no trend. There are various estimates of solar variability before this
time, based on sunspot numbers, solar cycle length, the geomagnetic AA index, neutron monitor data, and, carbon-14 data. These
indicate that solar activity probably increased somewhat up to 1940. While there is disagreement about the variation in previous
centuries, different authors agree that solar activity did not significantly increase during the last sixty-five years. Therefore, this
cannot explain the warming, and neither can any of the other factors mentioned. Models driven by natural factors only, leaving the
anthropogenic forcing aside, show a cooling in the second half of the twentieth century (for an example, See figure 2-2, panel a, in
chapter 2 of this volume). The trend in the sum of natural forcings is downward. The only way out
would be either some as yet undiscovered unknown forcing or a warming trend that arises by
chance from an unforced internal variability in the climate system. The latter cannot be completely
ruled out, but has to be considered highly unlikely. No evidence in the observed record, proxy
data, or current models suggest that such internal variability could cause a sustained trend of global
warming of the observed magnitude. As discussed, twentieth century warming is unprecedented
over the past 1,000 years (or even 2,000 years, as the few longer reconstructions available now suggest), which does not
'support the idea of large internal fluctuations. Also, those past variations correlate well with past forcing (solar variability, volcanic
activity) and thus appear to be largely forced rather than due to unforced internal variability." And indeed, it would be difficult for a
large and sustained unforced variability to satisfy the fundamental physical law of energy conservation. Natural internal variability
generally shifts heat around different parts of the climate system-for example, the large El Nino event of 1998, which warmed, the
atmosphere by releasing heat stored in the ocean. This mechanism implies that the ocean heat content drops as the atmosphere
warms. For past decades, as discussed, we observed the atmosphere warming and the ocean heat content increasing, which rules
out heat release from the ocean as a cause of surface warming. The heat content of the whole climate system is increasing, and
there is no plausible source of this heat other than the heat trapped by greenhouse gases. ' A completely different approach to
attribution is to analyze the spatial patterns of climate change. This is done in so-called fingerprint studies, which associate particular
patterns or "fingerprints" with different forcings. It is plausible that the pattern of a solar-forced climate change differs from the
pattern of a change caused by greenhouse gases. For example, a characteristic of greenhouse gases is that heat is trapped closer to
the Earth's surface and that, unlike solar variability, greenhouse gases tend to warm more in winter, and at night. Such studies
have used different data sets and have been performed by different groups of researchers
with different statistical methods. They consistently conclude that the observed spatial
pattern of warming can only be explained by greenhouse gases.49 Overall, it has to be considered, highly
likely' that the observed warming is indeed predominantly due to the human-caused increase in
greenhouse gases. '

Reversible
Global warming is reversible but this decade is key.
Chestney 12 Reuters reporter, citing executive director of the Australian National Universitys Climate Change Institute (Nina,
Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible Scientists, 3/26/13; < http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-climate-
thresholds-idUSBRE82P0UJ20120326>)//Beddow
(Reuters) - The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter,
making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. Scientific
estimates differ but the world's temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if
greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably. As emissions grow, scientists say
the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will
be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests. "This is the critical
decade. If we don't get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will
Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.
Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United States and China,
to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020. "We are on the cusp of some big
changes," said Steffen. "We can ... cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold
beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state." TIPPING POINTS For ice sheets - huge refrigerators that
slow down the warming of the planet - the tipping point has probably already been passed, Steffen said. The West Antarctic ice
sheet has shrunk over the last decade and the Greenland ice sheet has lost around 200 cubic km (48 cubic miles) a year since the
1990s. Most climate estimates agree the Amazon rainforest will get drier as the planet warms. Mass tree
deaths caused by drought have raised fears it is on the verge of a tipping point, when it will stop
absorbing emissions and add to them instead. Around 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon were lost in 2005 from the
rainforest and 2.2 billion tonnes in 2010, which has undone about 10 years of carbon sink activity, Steffen said. One of the most
worrying and unknown thresholds is the Siberian permafrost, which stores frozen carbon in the soil away from the atmosphere.
"There is about 1,600 billion tonnes of carbon there - about twice the amount in the atmosphere today - and the northern high
latitudes are experiencing the most severe temperature change of any part of the planet," he said. In a worst case scenario,
30 to 63 billion tonnes of carbon a year could be released by 2040, rising to 232 to 380 billion
tonnes by 2100. This compares to around 10 billion tonnes of CO2 released by fossil fuel use each year. Increased CO2
in the atmosphere has also turned oceans more acidic as they absorb it. In the past 200 years, ocean
acidification has happened at a speed not seen for around 60 million years, said Carol Turley at Plymouth Marine Laboratory. This
threatens coral reef development and could lead to the extinction of some species within
decades, as well as to an increase in the number of predators. As leading scientists, policy-makers and
environment groups gathered at the "Planet Under Pressure" conference in London, opinions differed on what action to take this
decade. London School of Economics professor Anthony Giddens favours focusing on the fossil fuel industry, seeing as renewables
only make up 1 percent of the global energy mix. "We have enormous inertia within the world economy and should make much
more effort to close down coal-fired power stations," he said. Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell favours working on technologies leading to
negative emissions in the long run, like carbon capture on biomass and in land use, said Jeremy Bentham, the firm's vice president of
global business environment. The conference runs through Thursday.


Even if warming is irreversible, carbon reductions mitigate its worst effects.
Desjardins 4/2 member of Concordia university Media Relations Department, academic writer, citing Damon Matthews;
associate professor of the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University, PhD, Member of the Global
Environmental and Climate Change Center (Cla, Global Warming: Irreversible but Not Inevitable, 4/2/13; <
http://www.concordia.ca/now/what-we-do/research/20130402/global-warming-irreversible-but-not-inevitable.php>)//Beddow
Carbon dioxide emission cuts will immediately affect the rate of future global warming There
is a persistent misconception among both scientists and the public that there is a delay between
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climates response to those emissions. This
misconception has led policy makers to argue that CO2 emission cuts implemented now will
not affect the climate system for many decades. This erroneous line of argument makes the
climate problem seem more intractable than it actually is, say Concordia Universitys Damon Matthews and
MITs Susan Solomon in a recent Science article. The researchers show that immediate decreases in CO2 emissions
would in fact result in an immediate decrease in the rate of climate warming. Explains Matthews,
professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, If we can successfully decrease CO2
emissions in the near future, this change will be felt by the climate system when the emissions
reductions are implemented not in several decades." The potential for a quick climate
response to prompt cuts in CO2 emissions opens up the possibility that the climate benefits
of emissions reductions would occur on the same timescale as the political decisions
themselves . In their paper, Matthews and Solomon, Ellen Swallow Richards professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate
Science, show that the onus for slowing the rate of global warming falls squarely on current efforts at
reducing CO2 emissions, and the resulting future emissions that we produce. This means that there are
critical implications for the equity of carbon emission choices currently being discussed internationally. Total emissions from
developing countries may soon exceed those from developed nations. But developed countries are expected to maintain a far higher
per-capita contribution to present and possible future warming. This disparity clarifies the urgency for low-carbon technology
investment and diffusion to enable developing countries to continue to develop, says Matthews. Emission cuts made
now will have an immediate effect on the rate of global warming, he asserts. I see more
hope for averting difficult-to-avoid negative impacts by accelerating advances in technology
development and diffusion, than for averting climate system changes that are already
inevitable. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the climate mitigation challenge,
clarifying these points of hope is critical to motivate change.



Decreasing CO2 emissions now will decrease concentration of CO2 in the
atmosphere
Matthews and Solomon 13 (Damon Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Susan Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT Irreversible does not mean unavoidable
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22global+warming%22+%22inevitable%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=1%2C23&as_ylo=2013)

The distinction between how much irreversible warming is expected based on past emissions
versus how much can be avoided through our coming choices is linked not only to inertia in how
the climate responds to CO2 concentration changes, but also to inertia in the uptake of CO2
emissions by the global carbon cycle. The climate responds to increases in atmospheric CO2
levels by warming, but the warming is slowed by the long timescale of heat storage in the
ocean, which represents the physical climate inertia. There would indeed be unrealized
warming associated with current CO2 concentrations, but only if they were held fixed at
current levels(2). If emissions decrease enough, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere can also
decrease. This potential for atmospheric CO2 to decrease over time results from inertia in the
carbon cycle associated with the slow uptake of anthropogenic CO2 by the ocean. This carbon
cycle inertia affects temperature in the opposite direction as the physical climate inertia, and is
of approximately the same magnitude(1, 5). Because of the equal and opposing effects of
physical climate and carbon cycle inertia, there is almost no additional unrealized warming from
past CO2 emissions. If emissions were to abruptly cease, global average temperatures would
remain approximately constant for many centuries, but they would not increase very much, if at
all. Similarly, if emissions were to decrease, temperatures would increase less than they
otherwise would have

Decrease in CO2 emissions lead to decrease rate of CO2 allowing for larger
window to solve warming
Matthews and Solomon 13 (Damon Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University
Susan Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT Irreversible does not mean unavoidable
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22global+warming%22+%22inevitable%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=1%2C23&as_ylo=2013)

This means that while the CO2-induced warming already present on our planet the
cumulative result of our past emissions is irreversible, any further increase in CO2-induced
warming is entirely the result of current CO2 emissions. Warming at the end of this century
(and beyond) will depend on the cumulative emissions we emit between now and then. But
future warming is not unavoidable: CO2 emissions reductions would lead to an immediate
decrease in the rate of global warming.



Warming is reversible but the brink is now
Lemonick, Climate Central, 12 [Michael D. Lemonick, senior staff writer at Climate Central, a non-profit climate
reporting service, and a former senior science writer at Time magazine, 12/21/12, Its Not Too Late to Limit Global Temperatures -
But Almost, http://www.climatecentral.org/news/its-not-too-late-to-limit-global-temperatures-but-almost-15397, accessed
12/23/12, JTF]

For a couple of years now, climate scientists have agreed that to avoid the most serious consequences
of global warming we need to cap the planets average temperature at no more than 2
degrees C (or 3.6F) above where it stood in the 1800s. The temperature has already risen by
about 1C -- the longer we wait to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions, the harder it will be to reach that goal
and the recent international climate talks in Doha made it clear that emissions arent likely to be reined in anytime soon. This raises
the question of how much more those emissions could grow before the 2C target becomes physically impossible to achieve. And a
recent paper in Nature Climate Change has a somewhat encouraging answer. Even if annual emissions nearly double
by 2020 from todays 30 billion tons or so, it would still be possible to cap the temperature rise at 2C,
or at worst, rise slightly above that level before coming back down. Thats the good news. The bad news is
that possible doesnt mean easy, by a long shot. Capping temperatures after such a large increase in
emissions would be technically feasible, co-author Brian ONeill said in an interview, but so many things would
have to go right that youd have to be a very optimistic person to bet that it would actually happen. ONeill said the problem is
that emissions would have to be cut quickly and drastically after 2020. The technology for doing so already exists,
including nuclear power, biofuels and the capture and storage of carbon from power-plant smokestacks
before it can enter the atmosphere.

Melting creates more human activity in polar regions causing faster polar
melting
Lefeber 8/24/2012 (Rene DOCTOR CHAIR IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Polar Warming: An Opportune
Inconveniencehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151241

The inaccessibility of the Polar Regions explains the relative pristine state of these regions to
date. The human presence in these regions is presently limited by the extreme climatological
circumstances. This will change as a result of polar warming. The ecological boundaries of the
Polar Regions will shift in the directions of the geographical poles resulting in a diminishing area
of the ecological Polar Regions. Climate change and other ecological processes with an
anthropogenic origin, such as the acidification of soils and waters, the depletion of the ozone
layer, and the accumulation of persistent organic pollutants in people and animals constitute
serious threats for the fragile ecosystems of the Polar Regions. These processes will impact on
the capacity of the Polar Regions to supply goods and services of a certain quality in a certain
quantity. The use of the Polar Regions will change accordingly. There will be positive changes,
but there will also be negative changes. Existing activities will disappear and new activities will
emerge.

CO2
CO2 does cause warming their authors are deluded and ignore empirics.
Nuccitelli 12 - Environmental scientist, MA in physics and climate researcher (Dana, New Research Confirms Global Warming
Has Accelerated 4/9/12 < http://www.skepticalscience.com/new-research-confirms-global-warming-has-
accelerated.html>)//Beddow
Earths climate has varied widely over its history, from ice ages characterised by large ice sheets covering many land areas, to warm
periods with no ice at the poles. Several factors have affected past climate change, including solar variability, volcanic activity and
changes in the composition of the atmosphere. Data from Antarctic ice cores reveals an interesting story for the past 400,000 years.
During this period, CO2 and temperatures are closely correlated, which means they rise and fall
together. However, based on Antarctic ice core data, changes in CO2 follow changes in temperatures by about 600 to 1000 years,
as illustrated in Figure 1 below. This has led some to conclude that CO2 simply cannot be responsible for current global warming.
This statement does not tell the whole story. The initial changes in temperature during this period are explained by changes in the
Earths orbit around the sun, which affects the amount of seasonal sunlight reaching the Earths surface. In the case of
warming, the lag between temperature and CO2 is explained as follows: as ocean temperatures
rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend,
leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the
cause and effect of further warming. This positive feedback is necessary to trigger the shifts
between glacials and interglacials as the effect of orbital changes is too weak to cause such
variation. Additional positive feedbacks which play an important role in this process include other greenhouse gases, and
changes in ice sheet cover and vegetation patterns. A 2012 study by Shakun et al. looked at temperature changes 20,000 years ago
(the last glacial-interglacial transition) from around the world and added more detail to our understanding of the CO2-temperature
change relationship. They found that: The Earth's orbital cycles trigger the initial warming (starting approximately 19,000 years ago),
which is first reflected in the Arctic. This Arctic warming caused large amounts of ice to melt, causing large amounts of fresh water to
flood into the oceans. This influx of fresh water then disrupted the Atlantic Ocean circulation, in turn causing a seesawing of heat
between the hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago. The
warming Southern Ocean then released CO2 into the atmosphere starting around 17,500 years
ago, which in turn caused the entire planet to warm via the increased greenhouse effect.
Overall, about 90% of the global warming occurred after the CO2 increase (Figure 2).

AT:
AT: Adaptation
Adaptation fails warming is just too extreme.
Stabinsky 12 Professor at College of the Atlantic USA, compiled for WWF International Global Climate and Energy Initiative
(Doreen, Tackling the Limits to Adaptation: An International Framework to Address Loss and Damage From Climate Change
Impacts, November 2012; < http://www.careclimatechange.org/files/Doha_COP_18/tackling_the_limits_lr.pdf>)//Beddow
When mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions by responsible countries is insufficient to prevent dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system, 22 countries are forced to undertake disaster risk reduction and adaptation measures to
prevent permanent loss and damage. There are, however, limits to how far disaster risk reduction and
adaptation can reduce loss and damage. In the case of disaster risk reduction, some types of disasters will
increase in frequency and severity (see Box 1 on the latest intergovernmental panel on climate Change (IPCC) findings
regarding extreme events), overwhelming both risk reduction measures and generally the ability of
most developing countries to cope with the impacts of those disasters. Moreover, loss and damage from
extreme events extend beyond immediate losses of property and life. In St. Lucia, damage from hurricane Tomas was estimated at
about 34% of total gdp. 23 Such devastating impact has a serious effect on long-term prospects for
sustainable development. 24 Adaptation to 2C of warming will be more difficult than for 1.5 c . Adapting to 4 c or 6 c of
warming may be impossible. Moreover, given the changing nature of the global climate, adaptation will
always be insufficient, requiring a continuous learning process towards a constantly moving
boundary. The greater the warming, the more loss and damage that can be anticipated from the
adverse effects of climate change. Similarly, the less support for adaptation in terms of finance, technology and
capacity, the more loss and damage will result. A countrys level of development will also affect how its population experiences loss
and damage, as poverty and related socio-economic and infrastructure weaknesses exacerbate the impacts and adverse effects of
climate change. But a countrys lack of development or status of development is not an excuse for inaction by the global community
to help them respond to severe climate loss and damage. There are very real limits to how far human systems
and ecosystems can adapt to most of the slow-onset processes identified in UNFCCC decision
1/CP.16. This is true particularly for rises in temperature and sea levels, ocean acidification,
loss of biodiversity, salinization and desertification. Because such processes progress and
increase their impact over time and often at large scale, adaptation gradually becomes less
possible. As temperatures and sea levels rise, territory will become uninhabitable and
unproductive. s oil moisture levels will decrease to the point that cultivation of crops is no
longer viable in entire regions. Groundwater sources in coastal areas will become too saline to
be used as drinking water. Adaptation will become impossible on low-lying islands, in settlements close to sea level, and in
the most arid regions. This will lead to permanent loss of lands, livelihoods and cultural resources. 26 Permanent loss and damage
from slow-onset disasters will go far beyond economic loss livelihoods will be lost, territory will have to be abandoned, and
migrants from non-productive lands will lose their homes, culture and community.

Adaptation fails lack of knowledge.
IRIN 7/2 news agency focusing on humanitarian stories, project created by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (Integrated Regional Information Networks, What are the limits to climate change adaptation?, 7/2/13; <
http://www.irinnews.org/report/98340/what-are-the-limits-to-climate-change-adaptation>)//Beddow
JOHANNESBURG, 2 July 2013 (IRIN) - In the absence of decisive action to significantly cut the emission of earth-warming greenhouse
gases, most poor countries have resigned themselves to adapting to the effects of climate change. But as recent data show, the
global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit 400 parts per million - something that has not happened in the last
million years, and possibly not in the last 25 million years, according to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist -
leading to the questions: do even we know what we are adapting to, and what are the limits to our
adaptation? A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change points out that many communities are already
facing limits to their capacity to adapt. They suggest the development of a framework to define and identify these
limits, both for individuals and for communities. One of the papers six authors, Richard Klein, a senior researcher at the Stockholm
Environment Institute and an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, explained in an email to IRIN, "For
example, a farmer may no longer be able to grow enough food to sustain his or her family (e.g., due to saltwater intrusion or
recurring droughts) and decide to give up farming and move to the city to become an informal worker. On the one hand, that's a
form of adaptation, but from the perspective of the farmer, who would have preferred to keep farming, a limit has been reached.
But from the perspective of the community or the country, food security may not be at risk so no limit has been reached. Knowing
the extent to which an individual, community or country can adapt will be critical for policymakers, including those charting a
countrys agricultural path and those planning for urban growth. Yet little is known about the limits of adaptation. It's intuitive
that the existence of limits should have policy implications, but the challenge is that, even
though we know that limits are real, our ability to predict them is very small indeed, said Klein.
Defining limits The authors suggest a risk-based approach to define these limits and a framework to identify them. Limits to
adaptation are a function of both the rate and magnitude of climate change, and adaptive
capacity, wrote Klein. Limits are also scale-dependent; they could refer to individual farmers or households, to communities, to
sectors, to countries, and so on. The authors propose defining an adaptation limit as a point at which an
actor can no longer secure valued objectives from intolerable risk through adaptive action.
They offer rice farming as an example. South Asian rice plants' ability to pollinate and flower peaks at 26 degrees Celsius; there is a
10 percent decline in yield for every one degree Celsius above that. Here, the adaptation limit is the inability to breed rice varieties
that pollinate at all above 32 to 35 degrees Celsius. The valued objective is to produce rice as a staple crop and for export. The
intolerable risk is a level of loss in rice production, farmer livelihoods, income from exports and food security. Rising temperatures
increase the future probability that rice harvests may fail. If this adaptation limit is reached, alternative sources of affordable rice
will have to be found for consumers, and rice farmers will have to grow other crops to compensate for the loss of income. Preparing
for hardships Collective efforts to adapt will likely be a complex process, as the authors point out the tolerable degree of risk varies
from individual to individual. The best policies would better manage change before the capacity to adapt is exhausted. But much
more must be learned before appropriate policies can be developed. The authors underscore the urgent need for research in key
areas - including agriculture, water resources management and disease control - to determine where limits may exist so that actors
may anticipate and plan to mediate the hardships that cannot be avoided. They suggest a focus on strengthening early warning
systems within countries and communities and improving the capacity to operate across the various scales - from individuals to
sectors - as the impact of climate change unfolds.
Climate change is rapid adaptation fails
Parkinson, NASA climatologist, 10 [Claire L Parkinson is a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, where she's worked since July 1978, with a research emphasis on sea ice and its role in the global climate system. Claire has
a B.A. in mathematics from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in climatology from Ohio State University. She is a fellow of both the
American Meteorological Society and Phi Beta Kappa. 2010 The Coming Climate Crisis]

When in the late twentieth century the standard climate change paradigm included the assumption
that changes in the Earth's climate occur only very slowly, there was a comfortable sense that
although the coming changes might be undesirable, at least they would develop slowly, giving
humans a chance to adjust slowly as well. This comfort zone has vanished with the
determination from Greenland ice cores and elsewhere that climate, at least regionally, not only
can change abruptly but has frequently done so. In fact, one conclusion from the new results is that the fairly
stable climate the Earth has experienced for the past several thousand years might be unusual. Another possibility is that periods of
relative stability might be common enough; for instance, there might be long, relatively stable glacial states and long, relatively
stable interglacial states, with the transitions between the two states fraught with multiple abrupt jumps. In any event, the
evidence is now strong that abrupt shifts have occurred on many occasions in the past, prior
to the past several thousand years, and hence could certainly do so in the future as well,
whether triggered naturally or by human activities. This is cause for concern, as despite all our technological prowess,
adjusting to abrupt climate change would probably be considerably more difficult for us now
than it was many thousands of years ago, when the human population was much smaller,
there was far less infrastructure and personal property to deal with, and the Earth had more
unoccupied, unclaimed land to which people could migrate. If climate conditions worsened in one region in
the distant past, bands of early humans could move to another region considerably more easily than communities could move
today. They might have had to do it on foot, but even on foot, it was easier than moving a whole community under today's
circumstances.


AT: Antarctic Cooling
Antarctic cooling doesnt disprove warming unique deep ocean circulation
means a regional difference

Weart, 2008 Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics
*Spencer, Antarctica is Cold? Yeah, We Knew That, 2/12
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/02/antarctica-is-cold/]

Despite the recent announcement that the discharge from some Antarctic glaciers is
accelerating, we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are getting colder, and
indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has actually been getting bigger.
Doesnt this contradict the calculations that greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at
all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict and have predicted for the past
quarter century. Its not just that Antarctica is covered with a gazillion tons of ice, although that
certainly helps keep it cold. The ocean also plays a role, which is doubly important because of
the way it has delayed the worlds recognition of global warming. When the first rudimentary
models of climate change were developed in the early 1970s, some modelers pointed out that
as the increase of greenhouse gases added heat to the atmosphere, much of the energy would
be absorbed into the upper layer of the oceans. While the water was warming up, the worlds
perception of climate change would be delayed. Up to this point most calculations had started
with a doubled CO2 level and figured out how the worlds temperature would look in
equilibrium. But in the real world, when the rising level of gas reached that point the system
would still be a long way from equilibrium. We may not be given a warning until the CO2
loading is such that an appreciable climate change is inevitable, a National Academy of Sciences
panel warned in 1979.(1) Modelers took a closer look and noticed some complications. As
greenhouse gases increase, the heat seeps gradually deeper and deeper into the oceans. But
when larger volumes of water are brought into play, they bring a larger heat capacity. Thus as
the years passed, the atmospheric warming would increasingly lag behind what would happen if
there were no oceans. In 1980 a New York University group reported that the influence of deep
sea thermal storage could delay the full value of temperature increment predicted by
equilibrium models by 10 to 20 years just between 1980 and 2000 A.D. (2) The delay would not
be the same everywhere. After all, the Southern Hemisphere is mostly ocean, whereas land
occupies a good part of the Northern Hemisphere. A model constructed by Stephen Schneider
and Thompson, highly simplified in modern terms but sophisticated for its time, suggested that
the Southern Hemisphere would experience delays decades longer than the Northern.
Schneider and Thompson warned that if people compared observations with what would be
expected from a simple equilibrium model, we may still be misled in the decade A.D. 2000-
2010. (3) The pioneer climate modelers Kirk Bryan and Syukuro Manabe took up the question
with a more detailed model that revealed an additional effect. In the Southern Ocean around
Antarctica the mixing of water went deeper than in Northern waters, so more volumes of water
were brought into play earlier. In their model, around Antarctica there is no warming at the sea
surface, and even a slight cooling over the 50-year duration of the experiment. (4) In the
twenty years since, computer models have improved by orders of magnitude, but they continue
to show that Antarctica cannot be expected to warm up very significantly until long after the
rest of the worlds climate is radically changed. Bottom line: A cold Antarctica and Southern
Ocean do not contradict our models of global warming. For a long time the models have
predicted just that.
AT: Balloons Disprove

Balloons dont disprove warming new studies prove

ScienceDaily 2008 *Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved, May
30 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530144943.htm)

Yale University scientists reported that they may have resolved a controversial glitch in models
of global warming: A key part of the atmosphere didn't seem to be warming as expected.
Computer models and basic principles predict atmospheric temperatures should rise slightly faster
than, not lag, increases in surface temperatures. Also, the models predict the fastest warming
should occur at the Tropics at an altitude between eight and 12 kilometers. However, temperature
readings taken from weather balloons and satellites have, according to most analysts, shown little
if any warming there compared to the surface. By measuring changes in winds, rather than
relying upon problematic temperature measurements, Robert J. Allen and Steven C. Sherwood
of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale estimated the atmospheric temperatures
near 10 km in the Tropics rose about 0.65 degrees Celsius per decade since 1970probably the
fastest warming rate anywhere in Earth's atmosphere. The temperature increase is in line with
predictions of global warming models. I think this puts to rest any lingering doubts that the
atmosphere really has been warming up more or less as we expect, due mainly to the greenhouse
effect of increasing gases like carbon dioxide, Sherwood said. Many scientists, including Allen
and Sherwood, have long argued that temperature data were flawed for many reasons such as the
change of instrument design over the years. These systems were never designed for measuring
climate change, said Sherwood. However, some global warming skeptics had argued that
weather balloon temperatures were accurateand models that predicted global warming were
wrong. Allen and Sherwood predicted that measuring thermal winds, which are tied to
fluctuations in temperatures, would be a more accurate gauge of true atmospheric warming
than the thermometers. To measure the thermal winds, they studied data on the motion of
weather balloons at different altitudes in the atmosphere. They then calculated temperatures that
would account for the wind velocity recorded. The findings were reported online May 18 in the
journal Nature Geoscience.


Balloon / satellite data is flawed doesnt deny warming

Pearce, 2007 environmental consultant and BEMA environment journalist of the year [Fred,
With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change, pp. 11-12]

More contentious is whether we can actually feel the heat. Direct planet-wide temperature
records go back 150 years. They suggest that' nineteen of the twenty warmest years have
occurred since 1980, and that ' the five warmest years have all been since 1998. Could the
thermometers be misleading us? That has to be a possibility. The records, after all, are not a
formal planetary monitoring system; they are just a collection of all the data that happen to be
available. Two important criticisms are made. One is that satellite sensors and instruments
carried into the atmosphere aboard weather balloons do not back up the surface thermometers.
The instrument data suggest that if air close to the surface is warming, that warming is not
spreading through the bottom 6 miles of the atmosphere, known as the troposphere, in the way
that climate scientists predict. If true, this is very worrying, says Steve Sherwood, a
meteorologist at Yale University and author of a study of the problem: "It would spell trouble for
our whole understanding of the atmosphere." Not surprisingly, skeptics have given great play to
the suggestion that satellites "prove" the surface thermometers to be at fault. Not so fast, says
Sherwood. The satellite data are untrustworthy, because they measure the temperature in the
air column beneath a satellite and cannot easily distinguish between the troposphere, which is
expected to be warming, and the stratosphere, which should be cooling as less heat escapes the
lower atmosphere. Further, satellites do not provide direct measurements in the way that
thermometers do. Temperatures have to be interpreted from other data, which creates errors.
The scientists running the instruments accept that the results "drift." Every week, says
Sherwood, they recalibrate their satellite measurements according to data from weather
balloons. In effect, therefore, the long-term average data from satellites are creatures of the
balloon data. So how good is the balloon data? Here Sherwood found a surprisingly obvious
flaw-obvious, at any rate, to anyone who has left an ordinary thermometer our in the sun. The
sun's ultraviolet rays shining on the bulb force the temperature reading continuously upward so
that it no longer measures the air temperature. The true air temperature can be captured only
in the shade, unmolested by the sun's direct rays. Thermometers on weather balloons, it turns
our, are no different. They are "basically cheap thermometers easily read by an electric circuit,"
says Sherwood. They, too, show spurious readings when in the sun. Meteorologists have
recently fixed the problem by shielding the thermometers attached to weather balloons inside a
white plastic housing. Bur this was rarely done thirty years ago. Sherwood concludes that "back
in the 1960s and 1970s especially, the sun shining on the instruments was making readings too
high." And that, he says, is the most likely explanation for why balloon measurements do not
reveal a warming trend.
AT: Cooling
No cooling prefer long-term trends.
Nuccitelli 1/10 - Environmental scientist, MA in physics and climate researcher (Dana, Did Global Warming Stop in 1998,
1995, 2002, 2007, 2010?, 1/10/13; < http://skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008-
basic.htm>)//Beddow
A common claim amongst climate "skeptics" is that the Earth has been cooling recently. 1998 was
the first year claimed by "skeptics" for "Global Cooling". Then 1995 followed by 2002. 'Skeptics' have also emphasized the year 2007-
2008 and most recently the last half of 2010. NASA and climate scientists throughout the world have said, however, that the years
starting since 1998 have been the hottest in all recorded temperature history. Do these claims sound confusing and contradictory?
Has the Earth been cooling, lately? To find out whether there is actually a "cooling trend," it is important to consider all of these
claims as a whole, since they follow the same pattern. In making these claims, 'skeptics' cherrypick short
periods of time, usually about 10 years or less. 'Skeptics' also take selected areas of the world
where cold records for the recent past are being set while ignoring other areas where all time
heat records are being set. The temperature chart below is based on information acquired from NASA heat sensing
satellites. It covers a 30 year period from January 1979 to November 2010. The red curve indicates the average temperature
throughout the entire Earth. The red line represents the average temperature. The top of the curves are warmer years caused by El
Nio; a weather phenomenon where the Pacific Ocean gives out heat thus warming the Earth. The bottoms of the curves are usually
La Nia years which cool the Earth. Volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991 will also cool the Earth over short timeframes of
1-2 years. Below is the same temperature chart, showing how 'skeptics' manipulate the data to give the impression of 'Global
Cooling'. First they choose the warmest most recent year they can find. Then, in this case, they exclude 20 years of previous
temperature records. Next they draw a line from the warmest year (the high peak) to the lowest La Nia they can find. In doing this
they falsely give the impression that an ordinary La Nia is actually a cooling trend. The chart above clearly shows that temperatures
have gone up. When temperatures for the warm El Nio years (pink lines) during 1980-1995 are compared to 1998-2010, there is a
sudden increase of at least 0.2o Centigrade (0.36o Fahrenheit). Temperatures also jumped up by about 0.15oC (0.27oF) between the
cool La Nia years (Green lines) of 1979-1989 and those of 1996-2008 (the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 lowered the Earth's
temperatures in the midst of an El Nio cycle). The overall trend from 1979 through November 2010 (Brown
line) shows an unmistakable rise. This is particularly clear when we statistically remove the
short-term influences from the temperature record, as Kevin C did here: Did global warming stop in 1998, 1995,
2002, 2007, 2010? Link to this page The skeptic argument... Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002, 2007, 2010, ???? "January
2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature drops on all of the major well respected indicators. HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and
GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year" (source: Watts Up With That). What the science says... Select a
level... Basic Intermediate Global temperatures continue to rise steadily beneath the short-term noise. A common claim
amongst climate "skeptics" is that the Earth has been cooling recently. 1998 was the first year claimed by
"skeptics" for "Global Cooling". Then 1995 followed by 2002. 'Skeptics' have also emphasized the year 2007-2008 and most recently
the last half of 2010. NASA and climate scientists throughout the world have said, however, that the years starting since 1998 have
been the hottest in all recorded temperature history. Do these claims sound confusing and contradictory? Has the Earth been
cooling, lately? To find out whether there is actually a "cooling trend," it is important to consider all of these claims as a whole, since
they follow the same pattern. In making these claims, 'skeptics' cherrypick short periods of time, usually about
10 years or less. 'Skeptics' also take selected areas of the world where cold records for the
recent past are being set while ignoring other areas where all time heat records are being set.
The temperature chart below is based on information acquired from NASA heat sensing satellites. It covers a 30 year period from
January 1979 to November 2010. The red curve indicates the average temperature throughout the entire Earth. The red line
represents the average temperature. The top of the curves are warmer years caused by El Nio; a weather phenomenon where the
Pacific Ocean gives out heat thus warming the Earth. The bottoms of the curves are usually La Nia years which cool the Earth.
Volcanic eruptions, like Mount Pinatubo in 1991 will also cool the Earth over short timeframes of 1-2 years. Figure 1: University of
Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) temperature chart from January 1979 to November 2010. This chart is shown with no trend lines so the
viewer may make his own judgment. Below is the same temperature chart, showing how 'skeptics' manipulate the data to give the
impression of 'Global Cooling'. First they choose the warmest most recent year they can find. Then, in this case, they exclude 20
years of previous temperature records. Next they draw a line from the warmest year (the high peak) to the lowest La Nia they can
find. In doing this they falsely give the impression that an ordinary La Nia is actually a cooling
trend. Figure 2: Representation of how 'skeptics' distort the temperature chart. Even though the chart clearly
indicates increased warming, 'skeptics' take small portions of out of context to claim the
opposite. What do the past 30 years of temperature data really show? Below is the answer. Figure 3: Trend lines showing the
sudden jump in temperatures in the 1995 La Nia (Green lines) and the 1998 (Pink lines) El Nio events. Brown line indicates overall
increase in temperatures. The chart above clearly shows that temperatures have gone up. When temperatures for the warm El Nio
years (pink lines) during 1980-1995 are compared to 1998-2010, there is a sudden increase of at least 0.2o Centigrade (0.36o
Fahrenheit). Temperatures also jumped up by about 0.15oC (0.27oF) between the cool La Nia years (Green lines) of 1979-1989 and
those of 1996-2008 (the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 lowered the Earth's temperatures in the midst of an El Nio cycle). The
overall trend from 1979 through November 2010 (Brown line) shows an unmistakable rise. This is particularly clear when
we statistically remove the short-term influences from the temperature record, as Kevin C did
here: In spite of these facts, 'skeptics' simply keep changing their dates for 'Global Cooling',
constantly confusing short-term noise and long-term trends (Figure 4).

AT: CO2 Ag
Plants cant absorb increased CO2 kills nutrients
National Science Foundation 06 [National Science Foundation, NSF, is an independent federal organization
created by the Congress that addresses the issue of advancing health and science; Apr 13, Higher Carbon Dioxide, Lack of Nitrogen
Limit Plan Growth, http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=106861, DOA: 7-1-12]

Earth's plant life will not be able to "store" excess carbon from rising atmospheric carbon
dioxide levels as well as scientists once thought because plants likely cannot get enough
nutrients, such as nitrogen, when there are higher levels of carbon dioxide, according to scientists
publishing in this week's issue of the journal Nature. That, in turn, is likely to dampen the ability of plants to
offset increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. "We found that atmospheric carbon dioxide
levels may rise even faster than anticipated, because ecosystems likely will not store as much
carbon as had been predicted," said Peter Reich of the University of Minnesota, lead author of the study, which was conducted at
the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Cedar Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Minn.

We control uniqueness ag collapsing now
Gillis 11 [Justin Gillis, Editor @ NYT, 6-11-2011, A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself, Factiva+

Sitting with a group of his fellow wheat farmers, Francisco Javier Ramos Bours voiced a suspicion. Water shortages had
already arrived in recent years for growers in his region, the Yaqui Valley, which sits in the Sonoran Desert of northwestern
Mexico. In his view, global climate change could well be responsible. All the world is talking about it, Mr. Ramos said
as the other farmers nodded. Farmers everywhere face rising difficulties: water shortages as well as
flash floods. Their crops are afflicted by emerging pests and diseases and by blasts of heat
beyond anything they remember. In a recent interview on the far side of the world, in northeastern India, a rice farmer
named Ram Khatri Yadav offered his own complaint about the changing climate. It will not rain in the rainy season,
but it will rain in the nonrainy season, he said. The cold season is also shrinking.

Turn CO2 boosts weeds more than cropsrecent studies prove
Southwest Farm Press 08 [Southwest Farm Press, 4/9/08, Climate change may be fueling a new generation of more
aggressive weeds, http://southwestfarmpress.com/news/climate-weeds-0409/]

Is global warming fueling a new generation of more aggressive weeds? According to
recent research, the answer may be yes. One of the major characteristics of a warming planet is an increase in the
amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rising carbon dioxide has been shown to help vegetable and grain crops grow more quickly,
become more drought-resistant and produce potentially higher yields. Unfortunately, though, the impact of rising carbon
dioxide seems to be far more pronounced in the weeds that compete with crops
than in the crops themselves.Weeds are survivors, said Lee Van Wychen, director of
science policy for the Weed Science Society of America. They can fill various niches and
thrive under a wide range of conditions. While we have about 45 major crops in the U.S.,
there are more than 400 species of different weeds associated with those crops. There is
always another weed species ready to become a major competitor with a crop if growing
conditions change, such as an increase in carbon dioxide levels. The impact of rising
carbon dioxide levels on weeds can be striking. In a study conducted by Dr. Lewis Ziska
of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Agricultural Research Service, weeds grown under urban conditions
of warmer temperatures and more carbon dioxide conditions anticipated for the rest of the world in 50 years grew to four
times the height of those in a country plot 40 miles outside the city, where carbon dioxide and temperature reflected background
conditions.

Positive feedbacks outweigh the benefits of CO2
CORDIS 11 [Community Research and Development Information Service Europa, CORDIS provides information on all EU-
supported R&D activities, 7/18/11, Higher atmospheric CO2 triggers release of potent greenhouse gases,
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&RCN=33634, accessed 12/23/12, JTF]

A new research study led by Trinity College Dublin in Ireland suggests that soil releases the potent
greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide when a bigger concentration of carbon dioxide
(CO2) is found in the atmosphere. The findings, published in the journal Nature, are funded in part by a Marie Curie
Actions grant under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The researchers believe that the capacity of land
ecosystems to mitigate global warming has been overestimated. Earth continues to be adversely
impacted by human intervention, primarily through land use changes, deforestation and the continued burning of fossil fuels. This
activity leads to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and, in turn, global warming. To date, researchers believed that
because plant growth accelerates following a surge of CO2 levels - since stimulated assimilation of carbon by plants can fuel soil
carbon input and soil carbon storage - the ecosystems on land could also contribute to de-escalating atmospheric
CO2 levels and thus slow climate change. This study shows that this may not be the case. The radiative forcing
of terrestrial ecosystems is not determined by their uptake and release of CO2 alone. The soil
emissions of methane and nitrous oxide may occur in lower atmospheric concentrations than does CO2, but the
ramifications on a global level are significantly greater: 298 times higher for nitrous oxide and 25
times higher for methane. 'This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is
not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought,' explains lead author Dr Kees Jan van
Groenigen, research fellow at the Department of Botany at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. Dr van
Groenigen and colleagues from the United States collated all published research to date from
49 experiments performed in agricultural fields, wetlands, forests and grasslands primarily in
Europe, Asia and North America. All experiments focused on measuring how CO2 in the atmosphere impacts the
capacity of soil to take up or release the nitrous oxide and methane gases. Using meta-analysis, the researchers show how
increasing CO2 stimulates both nitrous oxide and methane emissions; the former affects upland soils
and the latter impacts rice paddies and natural wetlands. 'Until now, there was no consensus on this topic,
because results varied from one study to the next,' says Professor Craig Osenberg of the University of Florida in the United
States, co-author of the study. 'However, two strong patterns emerged when we analysed all the data:
firstly more CO2 boosted soil emissions of nitrous oxide in all the ecosystems, and secondly, in rice
paddies and wetlands, extra CO2 caused soils to release more methane.' Wetlands and rice fields are two major
sources of methane emissions into the atmosphere. According to the researchers, specialised microscopic organisms
in soil are responsible. Just like humans respire oxygen, these microorganisms respire both nitrate and
CO2 chemicals, and generate methane as well. Because they do not need oxygen to subsist, they thrive
when atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise. 'The higher CO2 concentrations reduce plant water use, making soils
wetter, in turn reducing the availability of oxygen in soil, favouring these microorganisms,' Dr van Groenigen says.

AT: Ice Age
No Ice Age now empirics.
Blackburn 10 Environmental Policy and BSc in Environmental Biology, climate scientist (Anne-Marie, How we know an ice
age isnt just around the corner, 9/1/10; < http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-we-know-an-ice-age-isnt-just-around-the-
corner.html>)//Beddow
According to ice cores from Antarctica, the past 400,000 years have been dominated by glacials, also known as ice ages, that last
about 100,000 years. These glacials have been punctuated by interglacials, short warm periods which typically last 11,500 years.
Figure 1 below shows how temperatures in Antarctica changed over this period. Because our current interglacial (the
Holocene) has already lasted approximately 12,000 years, it has led some to claim that a new ice
age is imminent. Is this a valid claim? To answer this question, it is necessary to understand what has caused the shifts
between ice ages and interglacials during this period. The cycle appears to be a response to changes in the
Earths orbit and tilt, which affect the amount of summer sunlight reaching the northern hemisphere. When this
amount declines, the rate of summer melt declines and the ice sheets begin to grow. In turn, this
increases the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, increasing (or amplifying) the cooling trend. Eventually a new ice age
emerges and lasts for about 100,000 years. So what are todays conditions like? Changes in both the orbit and tilt of
the Earth do indeed indicate that the Earth should be cooling. However, two reasons explain
why an ice age is unlikely: These two factors, orbit and tilt, are weak and are not acting within
the same timescale they are out of phase by about 10,000 years. This means that their
combined effect would probably be too weak to trigger an ice age. You have to go back 430,000 years to
find an interglacial with similar conditions, and this interglacial lasted about 30,000 years. The warming effect from CO2
and other greenhouse gases is greater than the cooling effect expected from natural factors.
Without human interference, the Earths orbit and tilt, a slight decline in solar output since the 1950s and volcanic activity would
have led to global cooling. Yet global temperatures are definitely on the rise . It can therefore be
concluded that with CO2 concentrations set to continue to rise, a return to ice age conditions
seems very unlikely. Instead, temperatures are increasing and this increase may come at a
considerable cost with few or no benefits.

AT: Solar
Best empirical data compilation confirms sun isnt causing global warming.
Nuccitelli 12 environmental scientist, MA in physics and climate researcher (Dana, Solar Activity and Climate: Is the Sun
Causing Global Warming?, 9/4/12; < http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-
advanced.htm>)//Beddow
It's often considered "common sense" that global warming is caused by the Sun. After all, the Sun is the source of almost all of the
energy on Earth. The Sun has both direct and indirect influences over the Earth's temperature, and we can evaluate whether these
effects could be responsible for a significant amount of the recent global warming. As shown in the Intermediate level rebuttal of
this argument, dozens of studies have concluded that the Sun simply cannot account for the recent global warming, but here we'll
go through the calculations for ourselves. Direct solar effect The Sun's largest influence on the Earth's surface temperature is
through incoming solar radiation, also known as total solar irradiance (TSI). Changes in TSI can be converted into a radiative forcing,
which tells us the energy imbalance it causes on Earth. This energy imbalance is what causes a global temperature change. The solar
radiative forcing is TSI in Watts per square meter (W-m-2) divided by 4 to account for spherical geometry, and multiplied by 0.7 to
account for planetary albedo (Meehl 2002). The albedo factor is due to the fact that the planet reflects approximately 30% of the
incoming solar radiation. This is a very straightforward and easy to understand formula - the larger the change in solar irradiance,
the larger the energy imbalance it causes, and thus the larger the radiative forcing. Studies have reconstructed TSI over the past 300
years. Wang, Lean, and Sheeley (2005) compared a flux transport model with geomagnetic activity and cosmogenic isotope records
and to derive a reconstruction of TSI since 1713. Satellites have directly measured TSI since 1978. As you can see, over the past 32
years, TSI has remained unchanged on average. In the early 20th century, from about 1900 to 1950 there was an increase in TSI from
about 1365.5 to 1366 W-m-2. The change in global temperature in response to a radiative forcing is: Where 'dT' is the change in the
Earth's average surface temperature, '' is the climate sensitivity, usually with units in Kelvin or degrees Celsius per Watts per square
meter (C/[W-m-2]), and 'dF' is the radiative forcing. So now to calculate the change in temperature, we just need to know the
climate sensitivity. Studies have given a possible range of values of 2 to 4.5C warming for a doubling of CO2 (IPCC 2007), which
corresponds to a range of 0.54 to 1.2C/(W-m-2) for . We can then calculate the change in global temperature caused by the
increase in TSI since 1900 using the formulas above. Although Wang, Lean, and Sheeley's reconstruction puts the change in TSI since
1900 at about 0.5 W-m-2, previous studies have shown a larger change, so we'll estimate the change in TSI at 0.5 to 2 W-m-2. with a
most likely value of 0.15C We can confirm this by comparing the calculation to empirical observations. From 1900 to 1950 the
Earth's surface temperature warmed by about 0.4C. Over that period, humans increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere by about 20 parts per million by volume. This corresponds to an anthropogenic warming of: with a most likely value of
0.22C. Therefore, the solar forcing combined with the anthropogenic CO2 forcing and other minor
forcings (such as decreased volcanic activity) can account for the 0.4C warming in the early 20th
century, with the solar forcing accounting for about 40% of the total warming. Over the past
century, this increase in TSI is responsible for about 15-20% of global warming (Meehl 2004). But
since TSI hasn't increased in at least the past 32 years (and more like 60 years, based on
reconstructions), the Sun is not directly responsible for the warming over that period. Foster and
Rahmstorf (2011) used multiple linear regression to quantify and remove the effects of the El Nio Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and
solar and volcanic activity from the surface and lower troposphere temperature data. They found that since 1979, solar activity has
had a very slight cooling effect of between -0.014 and -0.023C per decade, depending on the data set (Table 1, Figure 3). Like Foster
and Rahmstorf, Lean and Rind (2008) performed a multiple linear regression on the temperature data, and found that while solar
activity can account for about 11% of the global warming from 1889 to 2006, it can only account for 1.6% of the warming from 1955
to 2005, and had a slight cooling effect (-0.004C per decade) from 1979 to 2005. Note that this multiple linear regression technique
it makes no assumptions about various solar effects. Any solar effect (either direct or indirect) which is correlated to solar activity
(i.e. solar irradiance, solar magnetic field [and thus galactic cosmic rays], ultraviolet [UV] radiation, etc.) is accounted for in the linear
regression. Both Lean and Rind and Foster and Rahmstorf found that solar activity has played a very small role in
the recent observed global warming. Indirect Solar Effects Ultraviolet Radiation It has also been proposed that
ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which varies more than other solar irradiance wavelengths, could amplify the solar influence on the global
climate through interactions with the stratosphere and atmospheric ozone. Shindell et al. (1999) examined this possibility, but found
that while this UV variability has a significant influence over regional temperatures, it has little
effect on global surface temperatures. "Solar cycle variability may therefore play a significant role in regional surface
temperatures, even though its influence on the global mean surface temperature is small (0.07 K for DecemberFebruary)."
Moreover, Shindell et al. found that anthropogenic ozone depletion (via chlorofluorocarbon emissions)
may have reduced the impact of UV variability on the climate, and may have even offset it
entirely. "Another consideration is that upper stratospheric ozone has decreased significantly since the 1970s as a result of
destruction by halogens released from chlorofluorocarbons. This ozone decrease, which has been much larger
than the modeled solar-induced ozone increases, may have limited the ability of solar irradiance
changes to affect climate over recent decades, or may have even offset those effects." Galactic
cosmic rays Henrik Svensmark has proposed that galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) could exert significant influence over global
temperatures (Svensmark 1998). The theory goes that the solar magnetic field deflects GCRs, which are capable of seeding cloud
formation on Earth. So if solar magnetic field were to increase, fewer GCRs would reach Earth, seeding fewer low-level clouds, which
are strongly reflective. So an increased solar magnetic field can indirectly decrease the Earth's albedo (reflectivity), thus causing the
planet to warm. Thus in order for this theory to be plausible, Solar magnetic field must have a long-
term positive trend. Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds. Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend. Fortunately we
have empirical observations with which to test these requirements. Solar magnetic field Solar magnetic field strength correlates
strongly with other solar activity, such as TSI and sunspot number. As is the case with these other solar attributes,
solar magnetic field has not changed appreciably over the past three decades (Lockwood 2001).
Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux Cosmic ray flux on Earth has been monitored since the mid-20th century, and has shown no significant
trend over that period. GCR Cloud Seeding Numerous studies have investigated the effectiveness of GCRs in cloud formation. Kazil et
al. (2006) found: "the variation of ionization by galactic cosmic rays over the decadal solar cycle does not entail a response...that
would explain observed variations in global cloud cover" Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found: "we estimate that less than
23%, at the 95% confidence level, of the 11-year cycle changes in the globally averaged cloud
cover observed in solar cycle 22 is due to the change in the rate of ionization from the solar
modulation of cosmic rays." Kristjansson et al. (2008) found: "no statistically significant correlations
were found between any of the four cloud parameters and GCR" Calogovic et al. (2010) found: "no
response of global cloud cover to Forbush decreases at any altitude and latitude." Kulmala et al. (2010) also found "galactic
cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation events, and so for the
connected aerosol-climate effects as well." Low-Level Cloud Cover Unfortunately observational low-level cloud cover
data is somewhat lacking and even yields contradictory results. Norris et al. (2007) found "Global mean time series of surface- and
satellite-observed low-level and total cloud cover exhibit very large discrepancies, however, implying that artifacts exist in one or
both data sets....The surface-observed low-level cloud cover time series averaged over the global ocean appears suspicious because
it reports a very large 5%-sky-cover increase between 1952 and 1997. Unless low-level cloud albedo substantially decreased during
this time period, the reduced solar absorption caused by the reported enhancement of cloud cover would have resulted in cooling of
the climate system that is inconsistent with the observed temperature record." So the jury is still out regarding whether or not
there's a long-term trend in low-level cloud cover. Inability to explain other observations In addition to these multiple lines of
empirical evidence which contradict the GCR warming theory, the galactic cosmic ray theory cannot easily
explain the cooling of the upper atmosphere, greater warming at night, or greater warming at
higher latitudes. These are fingerprints of the increased greenhouse effect, the major
mechanism of anthropogenic global warming. Dansgaard-Oeschger Events Some individuals, most notably Fred
Singer, have argued that Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O, a.k.a. Bond) events could be causing the current global
warming. D-O events are rapid climate fluctuations that occur quasi-periodically with a 1,470-
year recurrance time and which, according to Singer, are "likely caused by the sun." However, there is
significant debate as to the cause of these D-O events, with changes in solar output being just one possibility (NOAA
Paleoclimatology). Regardless, the most obvious flaw in this argument is that the planet wasn't warming
1,470 years ago. The previous warm event was the Medieval Warm Period approximately 1,000
years ago. Bond et al. (1999) added further evidence that the timing of D-O events disqualifies them from being responsible for
the current warming, by showing that the most recent D-O event may have contributed to the Little Ice Age (LIA): "evidence from
cores near Newfoundland confirms previous suggestions that the Little lce Age was the most recent cold phase of the 1-2kyr cycle"
And a study by Rahmstorf (2003) also concludes that the LIA may be the most recent cold phase of the D-O cycle, and his research
suggests that the 1,470-year periodicity is so regular that it's more likely due to an orbital cycle than a solar cycle. "While the earlier
estimate of 20% [Schulz, 2002] is consistent with a solar cycle (the 11-year sunspot cycle varies in period by 14%), a much higher
precision would point more to an orbital cycle. The closest cycle known so far is a lunar cycle of 1,800 years [De Rop, 1971], which
cannot be reconciled with the 1,470-year pacing found in the Greenland data. The origin of this regular pacing thus remains a
mystery." However, according to Braun et al. (2005), D-O events could be caused by a combination of solar cycles and freshwater
input into the North Atlantic Ocean. But their study also concludes that D-O events are not expected to occur during the Holocene
(the current geologic epoch). "the 1,470-year climate response in the simulation is restricted to glacial climate and cannot be excited
for substantially different (such as Holocene) boundary conditions...Thus, our mechanism for the glacial ,1,470-year climate cycle is
also consistent with the lack of a clear and pronounced 1,470-year cycle in Holocene climate archives." The bottom line is
that regardless of whether or not the D-O cycles are triggered by the Sun, the timing is clearly
not right for this cycle to be responsible for the current warming. Particularly since solar
output has not increased in approximately 60 years, and has only increased a fraction of a
percent in the past 300 years, as discussed above. Ironically, prior to publishing a book in 2007 which blamed the
current warming on D-O cycles, Singer argued that the planet wasn't warming as recently as 2003. So the planet isn't warming, but
it's warming due to the D-O cycles? It's quite clear that in reality, neither of these contradictory arguments is even remotely correct.
Inability to explain empirical observations Aside from the fact that solar effects cannot physically explain the recent global warming,
as with GCRs, there are several empirical observations which solar warming could not account for. For example, if global
warming were due to increased solar output, we would expect to see all layers of the
atmosphere warm, and more warming during the day when the surface is bombarded with solar
radiation than at night. Instead we observe a cooling of the upper atmosphere and greater
warming at night, which are fingerprints of the increased greenhouse effect. Conservation of Energy
Huber and Knutti (2011) have published a paper in Nature Geoscience, Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in
Earths energy balance. They take an approach in this study which utilizes the principle of conservation of energy for the global
energy budget, and summarize their methodology: "We use a massive ensemble of the Bern2.5D climate model of intermediate
complexity, driven by bottom-up estimates of historic radiative forcing F, and constrained by a set of observations of the surface
warming T since 1850 and heat uptake Q since the 1950s....Between 1850 and 2010, the climate system accumulated a total net
forcing energy of 140 x 1022 J with a 5-95% uncertainty range of 95-197 x 1022 J, corresponding to an average net radiative forcing
of roughly 0.54 (0.36-0.76)Wm-2." Essentially, Huber and Knutti take the estimated global heat content increase since 1850,
calculate how much of the increase is due to various estimated radiative forcings, and partition the increase between increasing
ocean heat content and outgoing longwave radiation. The authors note that more than 85% of the global heat uptake (Q) has gone
into the oceans, including increasing the heat content of the deeper oceans, although their model only accounts for the upper 700
meters. Figure 6 is a similar graphic to that presented in Meehl et al. (2004), comparing the average global surface warming
simulated by the model using natural forcings only (blue), anthropogenic forcings only (red), and the combination of the two (gray).
In Figure 7, Huber and Knutti break down the anthropogenic and natural forcings into their individual components to quantify the
amount of warming caused by each since the 1850s (Figure 7b), 1950s (7c), and projected from 2000 to 2050 using the IPCC SRES A2
emissions scenario as business-as-usual (7d). Solar and volcanic activity are the main natural forcings included in the Huber and
Knutti study. Both are slightly positive since 1850, and account for approximately 0.2C of the observed 0.8C surface warming over
that period. Since 1950, the volcanic forcing has been negative due to a few significant eruptions, and has offset the modestly
positive solar forcing, such that the net natural external forcing contribution to global warming over the past 50 years is
approximately zero (more specifically, the authors estimate the natural forcing contribution since 1950 at -10 to +13%, with a most
likely value of 1%). The authors also note that they chose a reconstruction with high variability in solar
irradiance, so if anything they may have overestimated the natural contribution to the observed
warming. "Even for a reconstruction with high variability in total irradiance, solar forcing contributed only about 0.07C (0.03-
0.13C) to the warming since 1950." Other Attribution Studies A number of studies have used a variety of statistical and physical
approaches to determine the contribution of greenhouse gases and other effects to the observed global warming, like Lean & Rind,
Foster & Rahmstorf, and Huber & Knutti. And like those studies, they find a relatively small solar contribution to
global warming, particularly in recent decades (Figure 8). It's not the Sun As illustrated above, neither direct
nor indirect solar influences can explain a significant amount of the global warming over the
past century, and certainly not over the past 30 years. As Ray Pierrehumbert said about solar
warming, Thats a coffin with so many nails in it already that the hard part is finding a place
to hammer in a new one.

Negative correlation between solar activity and warming.
Cook 12 - Global Change Institute, University of Queensland, Australia (John, Solar Activity and Climate: Is the Sun Causing
Global Warming?, 12/17/12; < http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-
intermediate.htm>)//Beddow
As supplier of almost all the energy in Earth's climate, the sun has a strong influence on climate. A comparison of sun and climate
over the past 1150 years found temperatures closely match solar activity (Usoskin 2005). However, after 1975,
temperatures rose while solar activity showed little to no long-term trend. This led the study to
conclude, "...during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown
any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have
another source." In fact, a number of independent measurements of solar activity indicate the
sun has shown a slight cooling trend since 1960, over the same period that global
temperatures have been warming. Over the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate
have been moving in opposite directions. An analysis of solar trends concluded that the sun has
actually contributed a slight cooling influence in recent decades (Lockwood 2008). Foster and Rahmstorf
(2011) used multiple linear regression to quantify and remove the effects of the El Nio Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and solar and
volcanic activity from the surface and lower troposphere temperature data. They found that from 1979 to 2010, solar activity
had a very slight cooling effect of between -0.014 and -0.023C per decade, depending on the data set
(Table 1, Figure 2). Like Foster and Rahmstorf, Lean and Rind (2008) performed a multiple linear regression on the temperature data,
and found that while solar activity can account for about 11% of the global warming from 1889 to
2006, it can only account for 1.6% of the warming from 1955 to 2005, and had a slight cooling
effect (-0.004C per decade) from 1979 to 2005. A number of studies have used a variety of statistical and physical
approaches to determine the contribution of greenhouse gases and other effects to the observed global warming, like Lean & Rind
and Foster & Rahmstorf. And like those studies, they find a relatively small solar contribution to global
warming, particularly in recent decades (Figure 3).


AT: GHG Impossible
The greenhouse effect is indisputable

Farley prof of physics 2008 professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas *John W, The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global
Warming, July-August 2008 http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php]

The greenhouse effect warms the earth. The warming power of the sun is mostly in the visible
and ultraviolet region of the spectrum. The surface of the earth re-radiates solar energy back
toward space in the form of infrared light. Because of greenhouse gases in it, the atmosphere is
transparent to the visible light coming from the sun, but opaque at many wavelengths in the
infrared band, resulting in the trapping of thermal energy and the warming of the earth. This is
the so-called greenhouse effect, which has been known for two centuries.4 The first scientist to
realize that the atmosphere warms the earth may have been the French mathematician and
physicist Joseph Fourier in the 1820s (who should not be confused with the journalist and
utopian socialist Charles Fourier). The primary greenhouse gases are water vapor, CO2, and
methane (natural gas, CH4). I dont know any scientist who doubts that the greenhouse effect
is a real effect. Too many people fail to appreciate how large the greenhouse effect really is. A
simple calculation based on the Stefan-Boltzmann law shows that if there were no greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere (and if nothing else about the earth changed as a result of removing
the greenhouse gases), the average surface temperature of the earth would be 18C (1F),
which is below the freezing point of water.5 The actual observed average surface temperature
of the earth is 15C (59F). Thus the greenhouse effect raises the earths surface temperature by
33C (60F). In this sense, global warming has already happened! Not only is the greenhouse
effect a real effect, it is a large effect. The greenhouse effect is intensifying as a result of the
greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere due primarily to CO2 from the burning of fossil
fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and deforestation. Accurate data by direct experimental
measurement was not available until 1959, when the geochemist C. D. Keeling started taking
data at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. That measurement program has continued up to the present.6 Chart
1 shows the data from 1959 to the present. The data show a seasonal cycle that matches the
growing season in the Northern Hemisphere, with a maximum in May and a minimum in
October.7 Most significant is a long-term upward trend: from 315 ppm in 1958 to 387 ppm in
2008. While other aspects of global warming have been controversial, nobody has ever doubted
the data from this measurement program. The data are rock solid. Several research teams have
measured the atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the data from the different researchers are
in agreement. Although the earliest data from direct measurement of CO2 in the atmosphere
are from 1958, it is possible to extend the data earlier by examining air bubbles trapped in ice in
Antarctica and Greenland. Data on the long-term CO2 trend show that the CO2 level remained
stable around 280 ppm during the last 10,000 years.8 Then CO2 began to rise around the time
of the Industrial Revolution, and is now 38 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. Climate
scientists attribute the pre-industrial level of CO2 (280 ppm) to natural causes, and the rise since
then to human activity, primarily due to the aforementioned causes. The question naturally
arises, what will be the effect of increased greenhouse gases? Since the greenhouse effect is a
real effect, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the buildup of greenhouse gases will result in
an intensified greenhouse effect, resulting in increased global warming to some extent. In other
words, the argument is over the amount of increased global warming, not over whether or not it
is occurring. The amount of increased global warming might be small or large, but it is a real
effect. The important scientific question is whether or not increased global warming will be large
enough to cause a problem.

Its a law of physics
Lemonick science writer 2008 Professor at Princeton University, senior writer at Climate
Central, a think tank at Princeton *Michael D, Beyond the Tipping Point, Scientific American,
October 2008 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=global-warming-beyond-the-co2]

The basic proposition behind the science of climate change is so firmly rooted in the laws of
physics that no reasonable person can dispute it. All other things being equal, adding carbon
dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphereby, for example, burning millions of tons of oil, coal and
natural gaswill make it warm up. That, as the Nobel Prizewinning chemist Svante Arrhenius
first explained in 1896, is because CO2 is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun,
which heats the planet during the day. But it is relatively opaque to infrared, which the earth
tries to reradiate back into space at night. If the planet were a featureless, monochromatic
billiard ball without mountains, oceans, vegetation and polar ice caps, a steadily rising
concentration of CO2 would mean a steadily warming earth. Period.

More ev

Weart forestry scientist 2008, Forestry Scientist *Spencer, The Carbon Dioxide
Greenhouse Effect http://aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm January+

In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a "greenhouse effect"
which affects the planet's temperature. These scientists were interested chiefly in the possibility
that a lower level of carbon dioxide gas might explain the ice ages of the distant past. At the turn
of the century, Svante Arrhenius calculated that emissions from human industry might someday
bring a global warming. Other scientists dismissed his idea as faulty. In 1938, G.S. Callendar
argued that the level of carbon dioxide was climbing and raising global temperature, but most
scientists found his arguments implausible. It was almost by chance that a few researchers in
the 1950s discovered that global warming truly was possible. In the early 1960s, C.D. Keeling
measured the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: it was rising fast. Researchers began to
take an interest, struggling to understand how the level of carbon dioxide had changed in the
past, and how the level was influenced by chemical and biological forces. They found that the
gas plays a crucial role in climate change, so that the rising level could gravely affect our future.
Like many Victorian natural philosophers, John Tyndall was fascinated by a great many
questions. While he was preparing an important treatise on "Heat as a Mode of Motion" he took
time to consider geology. Tyndall had hands-on knowledge of the subject, for he was an ardent
Alpinist (in 1861 he made the first ascent of the Weisshorn). Familiar with glaciers, he had been
convinced by the evidence hotly debated among scientists of his day that tens of
thousands of years ago, colossal layers of ice had covered all of northern Europe. How could
climate possibly change so radically? One possible answer was a change in the composition of
the Earth's atmosphere. Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, scientists had
understood that gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat received from the Sun. This was
the effect that would later be called, by an inaccurate analogy, the "greenhouse effect." The
equations and data available to 19th-century scientists were far too poor to allow an accurate
calculation. Yet the physics was straightforward enough to show that a bare rock at the Earth's
distance from the Sun should be far colder than the Earth actually is. Tyndall set out to find
whether there was in fact any gas that could trap heat rays. In 1859, his careful laboratory work
identified several gases that did just that. The most important was simple water vapor (H2O).
Also effective was carbon dioxide (CO2), although in the atmosphere the gas is only a few parts
in ten thousand. Just as a sheet of paper will block more light than an entire pool of clear water,
so the trace of CO2 altered the balance of heat radiation through the entire atmosphere. (For
full explanation of the science, follow the link at right to the essay on Simple Models of
Climate.)(1)
AT: Global Cooling
Prefer our evidence - their predictions rely on a few recent measurements
aggregate data concludes otherwise

Revkin, environmental reporter, 2008 environment reporter, the New York Times
*Andrew C, Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell, March 2, New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin]

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past
year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a
vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in
the globes average temperature. It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political
operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global
warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment. Earths Fever Breaks: Global COOLING
Currently Under Way, read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc Morano,
the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee. So what is happening? According to a host of climate experts, including
some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned
weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Nia phase for a
few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Nio pattern. If anything else is
afoot like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric
patterns that can influence temperatures an array of scientists who have staked out differing
positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint
whether such a new force is at work. Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way
undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted
weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning
fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air. The current downturn is not very
unusual, said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in
Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose
findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar
drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.
Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Nia event is over, he said. Mr. Morano,
in an e-mail message, was undaunted, saying turnabout is fair play: Fair is fair. Noting (not
hyping) an unusually harsh global winter is merely pointing out the obvious. Dissenters of a
man-made climate crisis are using the reality of this record-breaking winter to expose the silly
warming alarmism that the news media and some scientists have been ceaselessly promoting
for decades. More clucking about the cold is likely over the next several days. The Heartland
Institute, a public policy research group in Chicago opposed to regulatory approaches to
environmental problems, is holding a conference in Times Square on Monday and Tuesday
aimed at exploring questions about the cause and dangers of climate change. The event will
convene an array of scientists, economists, statisticians and libertarian commentators holding a
dizzying range of views on the changing climate from those who see a human influence but
think it is not dangerous, to others who say global warming is a hoax, the suns fault or
beneficial. Many attendees say it is the dawn of a new paradigm. But many climate scientists
and environmental campaigners say it is the skeptics last stand. Michael E. Schlesinger, an
atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that any focus on the
last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating
greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a
harmful distraction. Discerning a human influence on climate, he said, involves finding a signal
in a noisy background. He added, The only way to do this within our noisy climate system is to
average over a sufficient number of years that the noise is greatly diminished, thereby revealing
the signal. This means that one cannot look at any single year and know whether what one is
seeing is the signal or the noise or both the signal and the noise. The shifts in the extent and
thickness of sea ice in the Arctic (where ice has retreated significantly in recent summers) and
Antarctic (where the area of floating sea ice has grown lately) are similarly hard to attribute to
particular influences. Interviews and e-mail exchanges with half a dozen polar climate and ice
experts last week produced a rough consensus: Even with the extensive refreezing of Arctic
waters in the deep chill of the sunless boreal winter, the fresh-formed ice remains far thinner
than the yards-thick, years-old ice that dominated the region until the 1990s. That means the
odds of having vast stretches of open water next summer remain high, many Arctic experts said.
Climate skeptics typically take a few small pieces of the puzzle to debunk global warming, and
ignore the whole picture that the larger science community sees by looking at all the pieces,
said Ignatius G. Rigor, a climate scientist at the Polar Science Center of the University of
Washington in Seattle. He said the argument for a growing human influence on climate laid out
in last years reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or I.P.C.C., was
supported by evidence from many fields. I will admit that we do not have all the pieces, Dr.
Rigor said, but as the I.P.C.C. reports, the preponderance of evidence suggests that global
warming is real. As for the Arctic, he said, Yes, this years winter ice extent is higher than last
years, but it is still lower than the long-term mean. Dr. Rigor said next summers ice retreat,
despite the regrowth of thin fresh-formed ice now, could still surpass last years, when nearly all
of the Arctic Ocean between Alaska and Siberia was open water.
AT: Stopped in 1998
Warming didnt stop in 1998 ocean measurements prove

Le Page, science writer, 2008 8/15/2008 *Michael, Special Report Climate Change:
Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998,
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn14527-climate-myths-
global-warming-stopped-in-1998.html]

Even if the atmospheric temperature near the earth's surface has become cooler recently, that
doesn't mean the planet as a whole isn't heating up Imagine two people standing at the South
Pole, one dressed in full Antarctic gear and the other wearing not much at all. Now imagine that
you're looking through one of those infrared thermal imagers that show how hot things are.
Which person will look warmest - and which will be frozen solid after a few hours? The answer,
of course, is that the near-naked person will appear hotter: but because they are losing heat
fast, they will freeze long before the person dressed more appropriately for the weather. The
point is that you have to look beyond the surface to understand how a body's temperature will
change over time - and that's as true of planets as it is of warm-blooded bipeds. Now take a
look at the two main compilations (see figures, right) of global surface temperatures, based on
monthly records from weather stations around the world. According to the dataset of the UK
Met Office Hadley Centre (see figure), 1998 was the warmest year by far since records began,
but since 2003 there has been slight cooling. But according to the dataset of NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (see figure), 2005 was the warmest since records began, with 1998
and 2007 tied in second place. Tracking the heat Why the difference? The main reason is that
there are no permanent weather stations in the Arctic Ocean, the place on Earth that has been
warming fastest. The Hadley record simply excludes this area, whereas the NASA version
assumes its surface temperature is the same as that of the nearest land-based stations. It is
possible that the NASA approach underestimates the rate of warming in the Arctic Ocean, but
for the sake of argument let's assume that the Hadley record is the most accurate reflection of
changes in global surface temperatures. Doesn't it show that the world has cooled since the
record warmth of 1998, as many claim? Not necessarily. The Hadley record is based only on
surface temperatures, so it reflects only what's happening to the very thin layer where air meets
the land and sea. In the long term, what matters is how much heat is gained or lost by the
entire planet - what climate scientists call the "top of the atmosphere" radiation budget - and
falling surface temperatures do not prove that the entire planet is losing heat. Swaddling gases
Think again about that scantily clad person at the South Pole. If they put on some clothing,
they'll appear cooler to a thermal imager, but what's really happening is that they are losing less
heat. Similarly, if you could look at Earth through a thermal imager, it would appear slightly
cooler than it did a few decades ago. The reason is that the outer atmosphere, the stratosphere,
is cooler because we've added more "clothing" to the lower atmosphere in the form of
greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. As a result, the planet is gaining as much heat from the
sun as usual but losing less heat every year as greenhouse gas levels rise (apart from the
exceptional periods after major volcanic eruptions, such as El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in
1991). How do we know? Because the oceans are getting warmer. Tricky oceans Water stores
an immense amount of heat compared with air. It takes more than 1000 times as much energy
to heat a cubic metre of water by 1 degree Centigrade as it does the same volume of air. Since
the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the
oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere (see figure 5.4 in the IPCC report (PDF)).
Globally, this means that if the oceans soak up a bit more heat energy than normal, surface air
temperatures can fall even though the total heat content of the planet is rising. Conversely, if
the oceans soak up less heat than usual, surface temperatures will rise rapidly. This is why
surface temperatures do not necessarily rise steadily year after year, even though the planet as
a whole is heating up a bit more every year. Most of the year-to-year variability in surface
temperatures is due to heat sloshing back and forth between the oceans and atmosphere,
rather than to the planet as a whole gaining or losing heat. The record warmth of 1998 was not
due to a sudden spurt in global warming but to a very strong El Nino (see figure, right). In normal
years, trade winds keep hot water piled up on the western side of the tropical Pacific. During an
El Nino, the winds weaken and the hot water spreads out across the Pacific in a shallow layer. Its
heat is transferred to the atmosphere. (During a La Nina, by contrast, as occurred during the
early part of 2008, the process is reversed and upwelling cold water in the eastern Pacific soaks
up heat from the atmosphere.) A temporary fall in the heat content of the oceans at this time
may have been due to the extra strong El Nino. What next? Since 1999, however, the heat
content of the oceans has steadily increased again (despite claims to the contrary). Global
warming has certainly not stopped, even if average surface temperatures really have fallen
slightly as the Hadley figures suggest. In the long term, some of the heat being soaked up by the
oceans will inevitably spill back into the atmosphere, raising surface temperatures. Warmer
oceans also mean rising sea levels, due to both thermal expansion and the melting of the
floating ice shelves that slow down glaciers sliding off land into the sea. The West Antarctic Ice
Sheet, which rests on the seabed rather than on land, is also highly vulnerable to rising sea
temperatures. Some climate scientists are predicting that surface temperatures will remain
static or even fall slightly over the next few years, before warming resumes. Their predictions
are based largely on the idea that changes in long-term fluctuation in ocean surface
temperatures known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
will bring cooler sea surface temperatures. If these predictions are right - and not all climate
scientists think they are - you can expect to hear more claims from climate-change deniers
about how global warming has stopped. But unless we see a simultaneous fall in both surface
temperatures and ocean-heat content, claims that the "entire planet" is cooling are nonsense.

AT: Satellites Disprove

Satellites prove warming new studies conclude

Holmes 2007 *Bob, science reporter, Global warming raises water content of atmosphere,
New Scientist, 9-22, lexis]

Benjamin Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California,
and his colleagues studied satellite measurements of the water content of the atmosphere.
They found that total moisture content over the oceans had increased since satellite records
began in 1988, but the question remained whether or not this was due to human activity. So
Santer's team combed through a database of computer simulations involving 22 different
climate models, far more than any previous study. This reduced the risk that the idiosyncrasies
of any particular model would influence their conclusions. Some of the simulations included
greenhouse gas emissions, some included natural factors such as volcanic eruptions and
fluctuations in solar radiation, and some included both or neither. When they compared the
results of the simulations and matched them to the satellite data, the researchers found that
the simulations for increased greenhouse gas emissions gave the closest match (Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences , DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702872104 ). Moreover, the amount of
extra moisture in the atmosphere was very close to that predicted from increased evaporation
as a result of the temperature increase so far. "The climate system is telling us an internally
consistent story, so some of the criticisms we received 10 years ago are no longer valid," says
Santer. Extra atmospheric water vapour fuels the development of hurricanes and also acts as a
potent greenhouse gas in its own right, says Santer.
AT: Oceans

Ocean heat increase corroborates anthropogenic warming

Lozier et al 2008 Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment and
Earth Science, Duke
University [M. Susan, "The Spatial Pattern and Mechanisms of Heat-Content Change in the
North Atlantic," Science, 8
February 2008, Vol. 319. no. 5864, pp. 800 - 803,
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5864/800]

When viewed in isolation, the net heat gain for the North Atlantic basin (+0.4 W m2) is likely
explained as a small residual from the cancellation of the larger regional heat gains and losses
(4 W m2). Any anthropogenic warming would presently be masked by such strong natural
variability. However, given the reported heat gain for each of the other world ocean basins (1, 2,
18) and the rising air temperatures, the relatively small basinwide heat gain is plausibly
attributable to anthropogenic forcing. The overall North Atlantic heat-content change,
equivalent to an average increase in the surface heat flux of +0.4 W m2, is the same sign yet
slightly below the lower estimates of anthropogenic-induced radiative heating, ranging from
+0.6 to +2.4 W m2 since 1750 (19). Presumably, other parts of the global ocean and climate
system have taken up the remainder of the excess heat input.

AT: 1934 Was Hot

1934 was a NASA data error it doesnt disprove warming

Cook 2008 [John, http://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-hottest-year-on-record.htm]

1934 is the hottest year on record The skeptic argument...In August 2007, Steve McIntyre, who
operates the site climateaudit.org, noticed a strange discontinuity in US temperature data,
occurring around January 2000. McKintyre notified NASA who acknowledged the problem as an
"oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh. The warmest year on US record is now
1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place (source:
Daily Tech, Climate Audit).
What the science says... Steve McIntyre's discovery of a glitch in the GISS temperature data is an
impressive achievement. Make no mistake, it's an embarrassing error on the part of NASA. But
what is the significance? NASA's "Y2K" glitch Contrary to many reports, the error wasn't a Y2K
bug but a mixup over data corrections with the NOAA. NASA GISS obtain much of their
temperature data from the NOAA who adjust the data to filter out primarily time-of-observation
bias (although their corrections also include inhomogeneities and urban warming - more on
NOAA adjustments). From January 2000, NASA were mistakenly using unadjusted data. USA
temperature versus global temperature trends What is often overlooked is the temperature
adjustments only applied to temperatures in 48 U.S. states. As the USA comprises only 2% of the
globe, this has had infinitesimal effect on global trends. The graph below (courtesy of Open
Mind) compares the global temperature trend from before and after adjustments. Before the
error was discovered, the trend was 0.185C/decade. After corrections were made, the trend
was still 0.185C/decade. The change to the global mean was less than one thousandth of a
degree.



AT: NASA Report

NASA distorted scientific studies

Revkin 2008 [Andrew C. Revkin a senior editor of Discover, a staff writer at the Los Angeles
Times, and a senior writer at Science Digest. NASA Office Is Criticized on Climate Reports;
[National Desk] New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jun 3, 2008. pg.
A.16

Two years after James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, and other agency employees
described a pattern of distortion and suppression of climate science by political appointees, the
agency's inspector general has concluded that such activities occurred and were "inconsistent" with the law that established the
space program 50 years ago. In a 48-page report issued on Monday as a result of a request in 2006 by 14 senators, the
internal investigative office said the activities appeared limited to the headquarters press office.
No evidence was found showing that officials higher at NASA or in the Bush administration were involved in interfering with the
release of climate science information, the report said. It also credited Michael Griffin, the agency administrator, for swiftly ordering
a review and policy changes when the pattern came to light after articles in The New York Times early in 2006. The report, signed by
Kevin H. Winters, assistant inspector general for investigations, criticized what it said was a sustained
pattern of activities, largely supervised by senior political appointees, that included muting or
withholding news releases on global warming and, at least in Dr. Hansen's case, limiting a scientist's interactions
with reporters. "Our investigation," the report said, "found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA
Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that
reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general
public." The report said most evidence supported contentions that politics was "inextricably
interwoven" into operations at the public affairs office in that period and that the pattern was
inconsistent with the statutory responsibility to communicate findings widely, "especially on a
topic that has worldwide scientific interest." A NASA spokesman, Michael Cabbage, said: "The issues mentioned in
the inspector general's report are more than two years old, and after learning of those issues, NASA revised the agency's policy for
disseminating science information." Dean Acosta, who was deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the agency when the
problems surfaced, sharply attacked the credibility of the report. Mr. Acosta was appointed by President Bush in 2003 and resigned
in 2007. "My entire career has been dedicated to open and honest communications," Mr. Acosta, who now is director of
communications for the Boeing space-exploration business, wrote in an e-mail message. "The inspector general's assertions are
patently false. The report itself does nothing but raise questions about a three-year investigation that has yielded nothing but flimsy
allegations aimed at hard-working public servants." Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who wrote the request
for the inquiry, had a markedly different reaction. "Global warming is the most serious environmental threat
we face, but this report is more evidence that the Bush administration's appointees have put
political ideology ahead of science," Mr. Lautenberg said in an e-mailed statement. "Our government's
response to global warming must be based on science, and the Bush administration's
manipulation of that information violates the public trust."

AT: Solar Variation

Solar variation cant account for warming

Randerson 2007 [James. Science correspondent, the Guardian, p. 15, July 11. Science: New
analysis counters claims that solar activity is linked to global warming: Study undermines climate
sceptics' arguments: Correlations 'inconsistent' with temperature rise+

It has been one of the central claims of those who challenge the idea that human activities are
to blame for global warming. The planet's climate has long fluctuated, say the climate sceptics,
and current warming is just part of that natural cycle - the result of variation in the sun's output
and not carbon dioxide emissions. But a new analysis of data on the sun's output in the last 25
years of the 20th century has firmly put the notion to rest. The data shows that even though
the sun's activity has been decreasing since 1985, global temperatures have continued to rise at
an accelerating rate. The solar hypothesis was championed publicly in March by the
controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. The programme has
been heavily criticised for distorting scientific data to fit the sceptic argument and Carl Wunsch,
a professor of physical oceanography at MIT who featured in the programme, later said that he
was "totally misled" by the film makers and that his comments were "completely
misrepresented". The new analysis is designed to counter the main alternative scientific
argument put forward by the programme - that solar activity may be to blame for global
warming. "The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that
people are talking about," said lead author Mike Lockwood at the Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory in Oxfordshire. "They changed direction in 1985, the climate did not . . . (the
temperature) increase should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up." Global
temperatures are going up by 0.2 degrees per decade and the top 10 warmest years on record
have happened in the past 12 years. One way that the sun affects the climate is through clouds.
The sun's magnetic field shields the Earth from its high energy particles called cosmic rays. The
rays help form clouds that reflect the sun's energy back into space and cool the planet. So if the
sun's magnetic field is high, there should be a fall-off in cosmic rays, fewer clouds and more
warming. But Prof Lockwood's data, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society,
shows the sun's magnetic field has declined since 1985, even as the world heats up. James
Hansen, a Nasa climate scientist who was once gagged by the Bush administration for speaking
out on global warming, said the issue of whether the sun's activity is causing global warming had
been dispensed with by most scientists long ago. "The reason (this paper) has value is that the
proponents of the notion that the sun determines everything come up with various half-baked
suggestions that the sun can somehow cause an indirect forcing that is not included in the
measurements of radiation coming from the sun," he said. "These half-baked notions are usually
supported by empirical correlations of climate with some solar index in the past. Thus, by
showing that these correlations are not consistent with recent climate change, the half-baked
notions can be dispensed with." Prof Lockwood said the study was "another nail" in the coffin of
the notion that solar activity is responsible for global warming. Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a proponent of the solar hypothesis, has tried to rescue
the idea by invoking a time lag between changes in the sun and its effect on the Earth's climate.
But Prof Lockwood dismissed this as "disingenuous". "Nobody has invoked that kind of lag
before. It's only been invoked now as a way out," he said. Even if the lag were 50 years then he
believes we would begin to see the rise in global temperatures slowing down. Even though
there is almost no argument among scientific circles about the role of human activities as the
main driver of climate change, a recent poll suggested that the public still believes there is
significant scientific uncertainty. Despite the efforts of government and campaigns such as Live
Earth to educate the public, the Ipsos Mori poll of over 2,031 people, released this month, found
56% of people thought there was an active scientific debate into the causes of global warming. A
spokesman for the Royal Society, the UK's leading scientific academy, said: "This is an important
contribution to the scientific debate on climate change. At present there is a small minority
which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are
often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every
day. We have reached a point where a failure to take action to reduce carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gas emissions would be irresponsible and dangerous."
AT: Solar Variation (Mars)

Mars doesnt prove solar variation

Ravilious 2007 National Geographic News *Kate, Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause
for Warming, Scientist Says, February 28,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/55741367.html]

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the
climate changes we see on both planets. Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced
periodic ice ages throughout their histories. "Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small
contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the
increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said. By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the
sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we
see on Earth and Mars. Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other
climate scientists. "His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion,"
said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University. "And they contradict the
extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change] report." (Related: "Global Warming 'Very Likely' Caused by Humans, World Climate
Experts Say" [February 2, 2007].) Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, added that "the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations."
Planets' Wobbles The conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained
primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun. "Wobbles
in the orbit of Mars are the main cause of its climate change in the current era," Oxford's Wilson
explained. (Related: "Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says" [September 13, 2006].)
All planets experience a few wobbles as they make their journey around the sun. Earth's
wobbles are known as Milankovitch cycles and occur on time scales of between 20,000 and
100,000 years. These fluctuations change the tilt of Earth's axis and its distance from the sun
and are thought to be responsible for the waxing and waning of ice ages on Earth. Mars and
Earth wobble in different ways, and most scientists think it is pure coincidence that both planets
are between ice ages right now. "Mars has no [large] moon, which makes its wobbles much
larger, and hence the swings in climate are greater too," Wilson said.

AT: Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays cant explain current warming

McKenna et al 2007 [Phil, environmental studies fellow at MIT, Catherine Brahic, New Scientist
environmental reporter, David Chandler of the National Association of Science Writers, Michael
Le Page of the Centre for Child Health Research, Fred Pearce environmental consultant, Climate
Myths, New Scientist, May 19, lexis]

Myth: It's all down to cosmic rays NO ONE denies the crucial influence of the sun on Earth's
climate. The total amount of energy reaching Earth varies, but recent variations cannot explain
the recent warming. What if changes in other forms of solar activity have larger-than-expected
effects on the climate, though? In the late 1990s, Danish scientists revived the idea that the
high-energy particles known as cosmic rays might influence cloud formation by ionising the
atmosphere. If so, this could amplify the effect of small changes in solar activity on the climate.
Though most cosmic rays come from deep space, changes in solar activity can alter the number
that reach Earth. When there are many sunspots, the sun's magnetic field strengthens,
deflecting more of the cosmic rays in the solar system. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National
Space Center claims that fewer cosmic rays would mean fewer clouds, so warming Earth. He
thinks this effect explains the recent warming, arguing the case in a book he wrote with science
journalist Nigel Calder (who edited New Scientist from 1962 to 1966). There are at least three
separate issues here. Firstly, do cosmic rays really trigger cloud formation? Secondly, if they do,
how do the changes in cloud cover affect temperature? Finally, can this explain the warming
trend of the past few decades? The hypothesis is that the ionisation of air by cosmic rays
imparts an electric charge to aerosols that encourages them to clump together; the clumps
become large enough to trigger the condensation of water, and hence clouds form. As yet there
is no convincing evidence that such clumping occurs. Experiments under way at the CERN
particle physics laboratory near Geneva should settle the issue, but will not reveal if it matters in
the real world: the atmosphere already has plenty of cloud condensation nuclei, so it is not clear
why cosmic rays should have any great effect on cloud formation. A series of attempts by
Svensmark to show an effect have come unstuck. Most recently, he has claimed there is a
correlation between low-altitude cloud cover and cosmic rays. Yet a correlation does not prove
cause and effect. What's more, the correlation holds up after 1995 only if data is "corrected",
and others in the field say this correction is not justified . "It's dubious manipulation of data in
order to suit his hypothesis," says Joanna Haigh, an atmospheric physicist at Imperial College
London, UK. A few independent studies by other groups hint at a very tiny effect on clouds, but
most have found no effect. Then there is the question of how clouds and climate interact.
Svensmark claims the overall effect of less cloud cover is a warmer world in which the extra heat
that clear skies allow in during the day outweighs the increased heat losses at night. Not all
scientists agree with this reasoning, as even during the day many clouds in the upper
atmosphere can in fact have a warming effect. Finally, and most importantly, even if changes in
cosmic ray intensity do turn out to influence cloud cover and temperature, they cannot explain
the rapid warming of the past few decades. Direct measurements going back 50 years show a
periodic variation in intensity, but no downward trend coinciding with the recent warming.


AT: Milankovitch Cycles

Human influence outweighs Milankovich cycles

Tampa Tribune 2008 *Global Warming Denialists Misrepresenting Science, June 29,
http://www2.hernandotoday.com/content/2008/jun/29/ha-global-warming-denialists-
misrepresenting-scien/]

CO2 levels have fluctuated over the millennia, true. But ice samples dating back 600,000 years
show a variation of 175-280 ppm of CO2. The current level is 385 ppm. That is far higher than
the variation over several ice age cycles. The ice age cycles themselves appear to be related to
wobbles in Earth's orbit which vary its distance from the sun. These Milankovich cycles create
alternating freezing and warming of the planet. The planet was never caught in a Little Ice Age,
as DeWitt claims. The Little Ice Age is the name given to a period of unusually cold weather in
the North Atlantic region. Usually it is dated from 1400 to about 1800 AD; although some say it
started in 1300. Nobody knows whether the cold weather was continuous or whether a few extra
cold winters got all the "press." There was a 50 year period of observed low sunspot activity
from about 1645-1715. This is called the Maunder Minimum and is often associated with the
Little Ice Age. As astronomy was primitive in those days, there are serious questions as to whether
the Maunder Minimum existed, how long it lasted and whether it had anything to do with the
Little Ice Age. At any rate, a 2006 study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research
established that the difference in solar luminosity between peak sunspot years (maxima) and
years of low sunspot activity (minima) is only 0.07 percent. (That's seven one hundredths of 1
percent), leading the chief researcher on the project to note: "Our results indicate that, over the
past century, climate change due to human influence must far outweigh changes in the sun's
brightness." As to DeWitt's comment that we've been getting more sunlight since the 1980s.
True, but it is well established that the "global dimming" prior to the mid 1980s was due to
particulate pollution (aka sulfate aerosols) which blocked sunlight but have been steadily
reduced by environmental regulations in the developed world. DeWitt's allegation that the sun is
"10 percent hotter" has no basis in fact and borders on the ridiculous. His comment about global
warming on Mars was apparently inspired by widespread media misreporting of a 2005 study of
retreating glaciers in the South Polar region of the planet. The study itself made clear that the
shrinking ice cap was due to the fact that it was summer. Only the southern hemisphere of Mars
was affected.


Milankovitch cycles predict cooling

Cook 2008 [John, http://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-hottest-year-on-record.htm]

Earth's climate undergoes 120,000 year cycles of ice ages broken by short warm periods called
interglacials. The cycle is driven by Milankovitch cycles. Long term changes in the Earth's orbit
trigger an initial warming which warms the oceans and melts ice sheets - this releases CO2. The
extra CO2 in the atmosphere causes further warming leading to interglacials ending the ice ages.
For the past 12,000 years, we've been in an interglacial. The current trend of the Milankovitch
cycle is a gradual cooling down towards an ice age.


AT: Cycles

Current warmings unprecedented for 22,000 years

Joos and Spahni 2007, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, and Oeschger
Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern [Fortunat and Renato, edited by Susan
Solomon, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Rates of change in natural and
anthropogenic radiative forcing over the past 20,000 years,
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/5/1425.abstract, Dec 12]

The rate of change of climate codetermines the global warming impacts on natural and
socioeconomic systems and their capabilities to adapt. Establishing past rates of climate change
from temperature proxy data remains difficult given their limited spatiotemporal resolution. In
contrast, past greenhouse gas radiative forcing, causing climate to change, is well known from
ice cores. We compare rates of change of anthropogenic forcing with rates of natural
greenhouse gas forcing since the Last Glacial Maximum and of solar and volcanic forcing of the
last millennium. The smoothing of atmospheric variations by the enclosure process of air into ice
is computed with a firn diffusion and enclosure model. The 20th century increase in CO2 and its
radiative forcing occurred more than an order of magnitude faster than any sustained change
during the past 22,000 years. The average rate of increase in the radiative forcing not just from
CO2 but from the combination of CO2, CH4, and N2O is larger during the Industrial Era than
during any comparable period of at least the past 16,000 years. In addition, the decadal-to-
century scale rate of change in anthropogenic forcing is unusually high in the context of the
natural forcing variations (solar and volcanoes) of the past millennium. Our analysis implies that
global climate change, which is anthropogenic in origin, is progressing at a speed that is
unprecedented at least during the last 22,000 years.

AT: El Nino

El Nino cant explain warming its not powerful enough

Jarman 2007, environmental journalist [Melanie. Climate Change, July, pp. 138-139]

Is climate change to blame for the disappearing seasons? Some people still argue that naturally
occurring weather patterns may be behind it all. One such weather pattern is the El Nio climate
event, which involves changes in ocean currents and atmospheric circulation. While climate
events such as El Nio do have an impact on the climate system, the scale of current changes
suggests there is something more at work. Commenting on unseasonably warm temperatures
in the United States, Real Climate, a website where climate scientists comment on climate
science, said: *+ While El Nio typically does perturb the winter Northern Hemisphere jet
stream in a way that favors anomalous warmth over much of the northern half of the United
States, the typical amplitude of the warming is about 1C. The current anomaly is roughly five
times as large as this. One therefore cannot sensibly argue that the current US winter
temperature anomalies are attributed entirely to the current moderate El Nio event.*+


AT: History = No Extinction
Prefer climate models history isnt relevant
Ward, geosciences professor, 08 [Peter, professor of geological sciences at University of Washington, 2008,
Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Tell Us About Our Future, p. 177-178]

Can such an event be already happening-are we in the first stages of a greenhouse extinction? For this
latter question, our knowledge coming from the past extinctions is of little use. The rock
record is excellent at tracking million-year or even hundred-thousand-year events. But here
we are looking at events happening on decadal scales. There is no ice-core equivalent in the
rock record that resolves such short-term events in the past. Yet we can gain insight into this
question by looking at the state of the world's climate in the present.


AT: Cows

Cows are irrelevant

Wheat 2008, Ph.D. Biology and Consultant [Dr. David, http://sxxz.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-
cow-farts-cause-global-warming.html]

Cows can digest things we can't, especially including the cellulose in grass and grain. They do
this by maintaining cultures of microorganisms in their complicated series of "stomachs" that
can break down cellulose. The cows then digest the microbes and the sugars and fatty acids they
produce. (Brief overview of ruminant digestion here. If you are interested in delving into the
digestive physiology of ruminants in more detail, start here.) Some of these microbes produce
methane (CH4). Some of the other microbes can use that methane as food, but a certain
amount of it escapes as belches or farts (mostly belches). (Some people have microbes in their
guts which produce methane, and thus their farts also contain methane--but nothing compared
to the amount cows produce.) The publication Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United
States 2006 (pdf) summarizes the total greenhouse gas output of the US: Of the 605 million
metric tonnes CO2 equivalent of methane shown in the graph, about 115 million tonnes CO2e is
from "livestock enteric fermentation"--mostly cow burps and farts. That is less than 20% of the
methane load, and less than 2% of the 7 billion tonne CO2e total. Of course raising cattle causes
other greenhouse gas emissions. * There are about 56 million tonnes CO2e of methane and
55 million tonnes CO2e of nitrogen oxides released from cattle wastes as they decompose.
(Some of that methane can be captured and used to generate electricity or heat, while releasing
carbon dioxide, a much less potent greenhouse gas.) * About 227 million tonnes CO2e of
nitrous oxide is released from nitrogen fertilization of soils (30% of it from nitrogen fixed by the
crops themselves, not from industrially produced fertilizers). * Most of the nitrogen fertilizer
used on crops (89%) is used on corn (maize). About half of the corn produced in the US is fed to
livestock, a large fraction to cattle, especially dairy cows. So about 50 million tonnes CO2e
emissions associated with fertilizer use should be indirectly blamed on cows. * (Another large
fraction of corn is used to make ethanol as a motor fuel, indirectly causing the release of
significant amounts of greenhouse gases in the corn production. But that's another story.) So
cattle are responsible for about 3.5% of US greenhouse gas emissions, on a CO2 equivalent
basis. To keep this in perspective: * 2% of greenhouse gas production is in the form of
methane from garbage decomposing in landfills. * Roughly 2% is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
from air conditioners, refrigerators and industrial processes. * Other industrial processes
(especially cement manufacture) produce about 2%. * Burning jet fuel accounts for more than
3%. * 12% of greenhouse gas emissions are CO2 emitted generating electricity which is used
in residential applications like lighting, TVs, computers, and refrigerators. * 17% came from
burning gasoline in cars and trucks. So cow farts and burps do contribute some to greenhouse
gases, and thus to global climate change. But they are not a major cause. Nonetheless,
improvements in fertilizer use and waste management in agriculture could reduce the cow-
related burden on our atmosphere.


AT: Ozone

Ozone hole cant explain warming its been the same size for eleven years

Yang et al 2006 Georgia Institute of Technology [Eun-Su, Attribution of recovery in lower-
stratospheric ozone, March 22, Journal of Geophysical Research, with experts from Jet
Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, Hampton University , NASA/Langley
Research Center, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Division, and the
University of Alabama in Huntsville]

Multiple satellite and ground-based observations provide consistent evidence that the
thickness of Earths protective ozone layer has stopped declining since 1997, close to the time
of peak stratospheric halogen loading. Regression analyses with Effective Equivalent
Stratospheric Chlorine (EESC) in conjunction with further analyses using more sophisticated
photochemical model calculations constrained by satellite data demonstrate that the cessation
of ozone depletion between 18-25 km altitude is consistent with a that the cessation of ozone
depletion between 18-25 km altitude is consistent with a leveling off of stratospheric
abundances of chlorine and bromine, due to the Montreal Protocol and its amendments.
However, ozone increases in the lowest part of the stratosphere, from the tropopause to 18
km, account for about half of the improvement in total column ozone during the past 9 years at
northern hemisphere mid-latitudes. The increase in ozone for altitudes below 18 km is most
likely driven by changes in transport, rather than driven by declining chlorine and bromine.
Even with this evidence that the Montreal Protocol and its amendments are having the desired,
positive effect on ozone above 18 km, total column ozone is recovering faster than expected
due to the apparent transport driven changes at lower altitudes. Accurate prediction of future
levels of stratospheric ozone will require comprehensive understanding of the factors that drive
temporal changes at various altitudes, and partitioning of the recent transport-driven increases
between natural variability and changes in atmospheric structure perhaps related to
anthropogenic climate change.


AT: Volcanoes
Volcanoes are comparatively irrelevant

Short, research chemist, 08 [Jeff Short 2008 supervisory research chemist at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Auke Bay Laboratory, Anchorage Daily News (Alaska) p. B7 lexis]

Despite overwhelming evidence that humans are causing global warming, the arguments of ill-
informed skeptics continue to promote the illusion of scientific uncertainty. Because policy makers
routinely cite these arguments to justify inaction, they require rebuttal. One recent letter to the Daily News implies that humans
have nothing to do with the current warming because we played no role in previous ice age terminations, and that the inaccuracy of
climate models may be due to their failure to incorporate effects of galactic cosmic rays on cloud formation. Another
criticized the authors of the Alaska Greenhouse Emission Inventory for their failure to account
for water vapor, volcanoes and forest fires as natural greenhouse gas sources. These arguments are
dismissed by nearly all climate scientists not because of some self-serving conspiracy but
because these arguments are seriously flawed. Such distractions court disaster. All six ice ages
within the last 450,000 years were terminated by rapid temperature rises, triggered by small, regular variations in the Earth's orbit
that increased the amount of sunlight hitting the Northern Hemisphere. These small increases melted ice-sheet fringes and
stimulated releases of carbon dioxide and water vapor from the ocean to the atmosphere, which then amplified the temperature
increases in mutually reinforcing, positive feedback loops. These feedback loops can be triggered by a small initial temperature
increase or by a small greenhouse gas increase. Today these triggers are being provided by humans on a much larger scale. About
25 gigatons of carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere annually from combustion of
fossil fuels; that far exceeds the 0.1 gigatons from volcanoes and forest fires during years of
peak activity. As for water vapor, it is indeed a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but it is already
incorporated into climate models as one of several feedback mechanisms. These models now account for the Earth's temperature
record reasonably well and are not markedly improved when galactic cosmic rays are included. There is, however, no
dismissing the impacts of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. Loss of Arctic Ocean ice cover during
summer -- it has shrunk by around 40 percent in just the last two years -- is dramatically increasing the heat absorbed by the Arctic
Ocean, warming the surrounding landmass and thawing permafrost. Once thawed, vast stores of methane are available for release
from bacterial decomposition of organic matter. Methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so these
releases may trigger a runaway greenhouse scenario beyond our ability to stop. Climate models cannot account for the rapid ice cap
loss without including effects from black carbon particles produced by forest fires and industrial emissions. Black carbon absorbs
sunlight efficiently, increasing atmospheric warming and accelerating ice melt when they settle. These processes are happening so
fast that we have perhaps 10 years before we become committed to an ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer and subsequently face
high risk of rapid, irreversible warming. According to some projections, the ice may be essentially gone within five years for the first
time in the last 700,000 and probably several million -- far longer than our species has been on the planet. Once global warming
escapes our control, we will bitterly regret it. Whatever the short-term economic costs of reversing global warming, at least to
restore the Arctic ice cap, they are preferable to the nightmare that would unfold if we fail. As emphasized in the recent Alaska
Climate Impact Assessment report, we can and will adapt. But the report fails to acknowledge that doing so will almost certainly be
extremely repugnant. Humanity has "adapted" to the black plague, which killed one-third of the European population, to global
warfare, and to widespread famine and drought. Runaway global warming may lead to such outcomes on almost inconceivably large
scales, in duration as well as scope, within most of our lifetimes. History is littered with civilizations that
abruptly collapsed at the height of their power once environmental degradation became
irreversible. We simply cannot afford the ill-informed bickering that has paralyzed our political
process. We must act decisively, now.


AT: Great Depression

Great Depression cutback doesnt disprove warming

Farley, physics and astronomy professor, 08 [John W, professor in the department of physics and
astronomy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming, July-August
2008 http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php]

Contrarian Claim 1: The Great Depression Argument Alexander Cockburn argues that during the Great
Depression of the 1930s, worldwide anthropogenic production of CO2 fell by 30 percent, but
the concentration of atmospheric CO2 didnt fall by even one part per million, at a time when the
atmospheric concentration was just over 300 ppm. Cockburns data indicate that worldwide annual CO2 production from fossil fuel
plunged 30 percent, from 1.17 gigatons (Gt [1 Gt = 1012 kilograms, i.e., a billion metric tons]) in 1929 to 0.88 Gt in 1932, but the CO2
concentration did not fall by even 1 ppm. Cockburn cites the following figures: 306 ppm in 1928 and 1929, and 307 in 1932.
Cockburn proclaimed that a whopping 30 percent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didnt even cause a 1 ppm drop in the
atmospheres CO2. Thus it is impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from human burning of fossil fuels.17
Cockburn does not specify how large an effect on the CO2 mixing ratio he expects to see, but clearly, in his mind, there ought to be a
drop of at least 1 ppm, if anthropogenic CO2 were a significant contributor to the atmospheric CO2. Lets calculate how
large an effect should be expected, using Cockburns numbers. First, lets distinguish between a reservoir of carbon
and a flux of carbon. The atmosphere is a reservoir holding a certain amount of carbon, while the annual production of CO2 is a flux,
transferring a certain amount of carbon to the atmosphere every year. The reservoir of carbon (as CO2) in the atmosphere is
proportional to the concentration (expressed as parts per million), measured by the Mauna Loa observatory. The flux from burning
fossil fuel (and other anthropogenic sources) is a certain amount of CO2 injected into the atmosphere every year. The pre-industrial
level of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 280 ppm. As a result of the industrial revolution, the level crept up to just over 300 ppm
by the onset of the Great Depression. The increase of 20 ppm (= 300 280) was primarily due to the accumulated emissions from
fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. If the Great Depression had cut the burning of fossil fuels to zero, the
result would have been the gradual decrease (over a long period) from 300 ppm back down to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm.
Nobody should expect a 30 percent decrease in the 300 ppm level of atmospheric CO2, because 280 ppm is
natural. Instead you expect a 30 percent decrease in the rate at which CO2 is increasing in the
atmosphere. In more detail: Even after cutting back the burning of fossil fuels in the Great Depression, the fluxes were still
unbalanced, and atmospheric CO2 continued to increase. In the 1995 IPCC report, which covers the 1980s, the following numbers
reveal the reservoir and fluxes to and from the atmosphere. The reservoir of carbon in the atmosphere was 750 Gt in the 1980s
this is the total mass of all carbon in the atmosphere. The atmospheric concentration was about 340 ppm. From these numbers, we
can calculate that back in the early 1930s, when the atmospheric concentration was 300 ppmi.e., 88 percent (300/340 x 100) of
the value in the 1980sthe atmospheric reservoir was about 662 Gt., i.e., 88 percent of the value in the 1980s (662 = 750 x
300/340), since the concentration is proportional to the total amount (reservoir) of carbon. Cockburns estimate of the pre-
Depression (1929) rate of carbon emissions (the flux) is 1.17 Gt/year. To simplify, lets assume that all of the CO2 emitted were
retained in the atmosphere and all other fluxes were balanced. This would be associated with an annual increase of 0.18 percent
(1.17/662 x 100) in the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Thats an expected increase of 0.54 ppm (0.18 percent of 300 ppm) in the
CO2 concentration. By 1932 the fossil fuel consumption rate had fallen from 1.17 Gt/year to 0.88 Gt/year. This is a
30 percent drop in the rate at which the CO2 level increases. But it just means that you expect the annual
increase in atmospheric CO2 to be 0.13 percent (0.88/662 x 100) instead of 0.18 percent, or 0.39
ppm (0.13 percent of 300 ppm) instead of 0.54 ppm. It is the rate of increase that has fallen, from 0.18 to 0.13 percent or from 0.54
ppm to 0.39 ppm. Thus, the rate of increase has fallen by 0.15 ppm (= 0.54 0.39). To recap: If the Depression hadnt
happened, you would expect an annual increase of 0.54 ppm. But since the Depression did
happen, you expect an increase of 0.39 ppm. The difference is 0.15 ppm. Is it realistic to
expect to be able to detect a change in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from such
a small change in the rate of flux over just a few years? The signal of 0.15 ppm should be compared with the
year-to-year noise in the data. Looking at the data in the 1980s, where the high-quality post-1958 data from Mauna Loa is available, I
examined the year-to-year fluctuations. There are ten years in the series 19801989. For each year, I obtained the CO2
concentration in ppm. By subtracting one year from the previous year I obtained the increase from the previous year. These ranged
from 1.2 ppm to 2.55 ppm. Then I calculated the change from one year to the next of that increase. I had nine data points (= 10 1).
Six of the nine data points had year-to-year fluctuations of more than 0.15 ppm, and three data points had less than 0.15 ppm year-
to-year fluctuations. So, even in this favorable case, where the Mauna Loa has more reliable data than that which Cockburn cited
from the air bubbles in the ice records, you would not expect to detect a change of 0.15 ppm. Furthermore, I simplified the
calculation by assuming that all the CO2 from fossil fuel burning was retained in the atmosphere. Todays climate scientists believe
that roughly half of the CO2 injected into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel is retained in the atmosphere, with the other half
dissolving in the ocean (over a period of decades to a century or two). My simplified calculation is, thus, an overestimate, by roughly
a factor of two, of the increase expected in the CO2 mixing ratio. In conclusion, the Great Depression argument is
not valid. The expected impact of the cutback of CO2 emissions that occurred between 1929
and 1932 is too small relative to the historical buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere to show up in
Cockburns numbers.

AT: Ocean Burps

Atmospheric CO2 comes from fossil fuels isotope analysis

Farley, physics and astronomy professor, 08 [John W, professor in the department of physics and
astronomy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming, July-August
2008 http://www.monthlyreview.org/080728farley.php]

Contrarian Claim 4: The rise in atmospheric CO2 comes from the ocean, not from burning fossil fuel. Thus the rise is natural and not
anthropogenic. Climate scientists believe that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels and
deforestation enriches the CO2 in the atmosphere. Cockburn believes that most of the increased CO2 in the
atmosphere comes from the ocean instead. So where does the CO2 in the atmosphere come from, the burning of fossil fuels, or the
ocean? Nature has performed an experiment to decide this question, by putting a label on CO2
molecules, and using one kind of label on CO2 from fossil fuels and deforestation, while
putting another kind of label on CO2 from the ocean. We can examine the CO2 molecules in the atmosphere,
and the labels will tell us whether the CO2 is coming from burning fossil fuels or from the oceans. The labels are carbon
isotopes. Most carbon atoms have an atomic mass of 12, but about one percent have an atomic mass of 13. Carbon-12 atoms
can be distinguished from carbon-13 atoms in the laboratory, and both kinds of carbon atoms can form CO2 molecules. So about 1
percent of the CO2 we exhale is 13CO2. The two types of CO2, 13CO2 and 12CO2, behave pretty much the same during most
chemical reactions. However, some biological processes show isotopic fractionation, in which one isotope is more readily used
than the other. For example, in photosynthesis, plants take in CO2 from the air to build up their biomass. Terrestrial plants have a
preference to take in 12CO2 instead of 13CO2, so the CO2 in plants is richer in 12C and poorer in 13C than the surrounding
atmosphere. In other words, while the abundance of 13C is about one percent of the abundance of 12C, its not exactly one
percent. The ratio of abundances of 13C to 12C can be slightly higher or slightly lower than one percent depending on the source.
Carbon by source Scientists compare the abundance of 13C relative to 12C using the so-called d13C scale. The 13C/12C ratio in a
sample is compared to the ratio in a standard material. If the 13C/12C ratio in the sample is exactly the same as the ratio in the
standard, then d13C = 0. If the sample is enriched in 13C relative to the standard, the sample is assigned a positive d13C value, while
if the sample is depleted in 13C relative to the standard, the sample is assigned a negative d13C value. If the 13C/12C ratio in the
sample is higher than the standard by 0.1 percent, then the d13C for that sample is +1. If the 13C/12C ratio in a sample is lower than
the standard by 0.2 percent, the d13C for that sample is 2. The d13C values for fossil fuels/biomass, the atmosphere, and the
oceans are shown in table 2. Notice that the value of d13C in the atmosphere is in between the level for fossil fuel/biomass and the
value for the surface waters of the oceans. If the CO2 in the atmosphere (whose d13C is 8) comes from the surface of the oceans
(whose d13C is positive) then the d13C of the atmosphere will increase with time. However, if CO2 in the atmosphere comes from
burning fossil fuel (whose d13C is 27), then the d13C of the atmosphere will decrease. The result, from the Mauna Loa
observatory, shows the 13C/12C ratio in atmospheric CO2 is decreasing with time.20 These data
conclusively demonstrate that the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere comes from burning
fossil fuels and deforestation, and not from CO2 released by the oceans to the atmosphere. This conclusion does not
depend on the validity of computer models. In a response to critics who raised exactly the issue of isotopic
abundance ratios in CO2, Cockburn replied that burning fossil fuel is not the only way of introducing 13C-poor material into the
atmosphere. Cockburn believed that cold ocean waters absorb lightweight 12C preferentially, resulting in lots of 13C-decient
carbon in the oceans. This low-13C carbon most certainly would have been released massively into the atmosphere over the course
of the worlds warming trend since 1850....21 Cockburn would have a valid point if the ocean surface
waters were in fact depleted in 13C. Unfortunately for his argument, the ocean surface waters
are enhanced in 13C, while the deep ocean is depleted in 13C. Clearly, Cockburn is wrong on this
point.
AT: Ice Age
Link turn warming causes an ice age
Dyer, history PhD, 03 [Gwynne, PhD in military and Middle Eastern history from the University of London, 7-4-2003,
Spectator, Factiva]

The problem is that global warming was the first aspect of climate change to catch the public's attention and, for the vast majority of
people, it remains the only threat - if indeed it is a threat. After all, warmer isn't necessarily worse, and anyway, it's a gradual
process and we'll all probably be safely dead before it gets too serious. Climate researchers have known this is untrue for about 20
years, since the evidence of the Greenland ice-cores became available, but it has still not affected the public debate. Those
cores go down two miles into the ice-cap and bring up evidence of weather from up to 250,000 years ago. What shocked
researchers realised when they examined the cores is climate change - real climate change - is not
gradual at all. It's a threshold phenomenon, a sudden flip into a radically different state, that
may then persist for a very long time. The real danger we face is that gradual warming of the sort we are
experiencing now will trigger a sudden cooling that could drop average global temperatures
by 5C (41F) in 10 years. The sudden cooling, and the accompanying droughts, would destroy most of
the agriculture that now sustains six billion of us, and at least 90 per cent of the human race
would be killed by famine and war in a matter of a decade or so. These abrupt climate changes
could herald the beginning of the next Ice Age - but climatic flips like this can also occur for lengthy
periods - even in the midst of warm-and-wet interglacial periods like the present. WE do still live in the Ice Age, of
course. For the past three million years, ever since continental drift closed the channel between North America to South America
and changed the ocean currents, glaciers have covered more than a third of the planet's surface, almost 90 per cent of the time. The
recent pattern has been around 100,000 years of freeze, followed by a much shorter warm period. The previous interglacial era,
which ended 117,000 years ago, was only 13,000 years long, so at 15,000 years we're already into overtime on this one - but we
don't even need a major Ice Age to do the damage. The process by which the climate flips is now fairly well understood. The
trigger is a phase of gradual warming that, either through glacial melting or just more rainfall,
increases the amount of fresh water on the ocean surface between Labrador, Greenland and Norway. This
critical part of the North Atlantic is where the Gulf Stream's water, having become salty and dense, sinks to the bottom
and flows back south - but, if it is diluted by too much fresh water on the surface, it doesn't sink and the
circuit is broken. The whole global climate suddenly flips into a cool, dry phase that can last
for many centuries before warmer conditions return: There have been two such episodes, at 12,500 years ago and 8,500
years ago, even since the end of the last Ice Age. Or the cool, dry phase could last for 100,000 years if other conditions, like the
shape of the earth's orbit and the tilt of its axis, have already put us on the brink of a new Ice Age. The flips of the past
were caused by natural warming of one kind or another but, by adding man-made warming to the problem, we are
making it far more dangerous. We have built entire human civilisations, and increased our
population a thousandfold since the last cool, dry episode. All of that is at risk if the climate
flips , and yet the public debate is still about gradual change.

Otherwise an Ice Age wont happen for 70,000 years
Berger and Loutre 02 [Universit catholique de Louvain, Institut d'Astronomie et de Gophysique, 2002 [Andr. and
M.F., An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead? Science 23 August, Vol. 297. no. 5585, pp. 1287 1288]

When paleoclimatologists gathered in 1972 to discuss how and when the present warm period would end (1), a slide into
the next glacial seemed imminent. But more recent studies point toward a different future: a
long interglacial that may last another 50,000 years. An interglacial is an uninterrupted warm interval during
which global climate reaches at least the preindustrial level of warmth. Based on geological records available in 1972, the last
two interglacials (including the Eemian, ~125,000 years ago) were believed to have lasted about 10,000
years. This is about the length of the current warm interval--the Holocene--to date. Assuming a similar duration for all
interglacials, the scientists concluded that "it is likely that the present-day warm epoch will terminate relatively soon if man does not
intervene" (1, p. 267). Some assumptions made 30 years ago have since been questioned. Past
interglacials may have been longer than originally assumed (2). Some, including marine isotope stage 11
(MIS-11, 400,000 years ago), may have been warmer than at present (3). We are also increasingly aware of the intensification of the
greenhouse effect by human activities (4). But even without human perturbation, future climate may not
develop as in past interglacials (5) because the forcings and mechanisms that produced these
earlier warm periods may have been quite different from today's. Most early attempts to predict future
climate at the geological time scale (6, 7) prolonged the cooling that started at the peak of the Holocene some 6000 years ago,
predicting a cold interval in about 25,000 years and a glaciation in about 55,000 years. These projections were based on statistical
rules or simple models that did not include any CO2 forcing. They thus implicitly assumed a value equal to the average of the last
glacial-interglacial cycles [~225 parts per million by volume (ppmv) (8)]. But some studies disagreed with these
projections. With a simple ice-sheet model, Oerlemans and Van der Veen (9) predicted a long interglacial
lasting another 50,000 years, followed by a first glacial maximum in about 65,000 years. Ledley also stated that an ice
age is unlikely to begin in the next 70,000 years (10), based on the relation between the
observed rate of change of ice volume and the summer solstice radiation. Other studies were more
oriented toward modeling, including the possible effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on the dynamics of the ice-age cycles. For
example, according to Saltzman et al. (11) an increase in atmospheric CO2, if maintained over a long period of time, could trigger the
climatic system into a stable regime with small ice sheets, if any, in the Northern Hemisphere. Loutre (12) also showed that a CO2
concentration of 710 ppmv, returning to a present-day value within 5000 years, could lead to a collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet
in a few thousand years. On a geological time scale, climate cycles are believed to be driven by changes
in insolation (solar radiation received at the top of the atmosphere) as a result of variations in Earth's orbit around
the Sun. Over the next 100,000 years, the amplitude of insolation variations will be small (see
the figure), much smaller than during the Eemian. For example, at 65N in June, insolation will vary by less than 25
Wm-2 over the next 25,000 years, compared with 110 Wm-2 between 125,000 and 115,000 years ago. From the standpoint of
insolation, the Eemian can hardly be taken as an analog for the next millennia, as is often assumed. The small amplitude of
future insolation variations is exceptional. One of the few past analogs (13) occurred at about 400,000 years before
the present, overlapping part of MIS-11. Then and now, very low eccentricity values coincided with the minima of the 400,000-year
eccentricity cycle. Eccentricity will reach almost zero within the next 25,000 years, damping the variations of precession
considerably.

Prefer our evidence large sample sets
Revkin, environment reporter, 08 *Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times environment reporter, Skeptics on
Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell, March 2, 2008, New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin]

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past
year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat
last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globes average temperature. It is no wonder that
some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about
dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment. Earths
Fever Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way, read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc Morano, the
communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. So what is
happening? According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global
warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific
Ocean, which is in its La Nia phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite
warm El Nio pattern. If anything else is afoot like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and
atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall
threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.
Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of
evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas
should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to
accumulate in the air. The current downturn is not very unusual, said Carl Mears, a scientist at
Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track
global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate
experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term
warming trend clear nonetheless. Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Nia
event is over, he said. Mr. Morano, in an e-mail message, was undaunted, saying turnabout is fair play: Fair is fair. Noting
(not hyping) an unusually harsh global winter is merely pointing out the obvious. Dissenters of a man-made climate crisis are using
the reality of this record-breaking winter to expose the silly warming alarmism that the news media and some scientists have been
ceaselessly promoting for decades. More clucking about the cold is likely over the next several days. The Heartland
Institute, a public policy research group in Chicago opposed to regulatory approaches to environmental problems, is holding a
conference in Times Square on Monday and Tuesday aimed at exploring questions about the cause and dangers of climate change.
The event will convene an array of scientists, economists, statisticians and libertarian commentators holding a dizzying range of
views on the changing climate from those who see a human influence but think it is not dangerous, to others who say global
warming is a hoax, the suns fault or beneficial. Many attendees say it is the dawn of a new paradigm. But many climate
scientists and environmental campaigners say it is the skeptics last stand. Michael E. Schlesinger, an
atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that any focus on the last few months or
years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases
are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful
distraction. Discerning a human influence on climate, he said, involves finding a signal in a noisy background. He added, The
only way to do this within our noisy climate system is to average over a sufficient number of years that the noise is greatly
diminished, thereby revealing the signal. This means that one cannot look at any single year and know whether
what one is seeing is the signal or the noise or both the signal and the noise. The shifts in the extent
and thickness of sea ice in the Arctic (where ice has retreated significantly in recent summers) and Antarctic (where the area of
floating sea ice has grown lately) are similarly hard to attribute to particular influences. Interviews and e-mail exchanges with half a
dozen polar climate and ice experts last week produced a rough consensus: Even with the extensive refreezing of
Arctic waters in the deep chill of the sunless boreal winter, the fresh-formed ice remains far
thinner than the yards-thick, years-old ice that dominated the region until the 1990s. That
means the odds of having vast stretches of open water next summer remain high, many Arctic
experts said. Climate skeptics typically take a few small pieces of the puzzle to debunk global
warming, and ignore the whole picture that the larger science community sees by looking at
all the pieces, said Ignatius G. Rigor, a climate scientist at the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington in Seattle.
He said the argument for a growing human influence on climate laid out in last years reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, or I.P.C.C., was supported by evidence from many fields. I will admit that we do not have all the pieces, Dr. Rigor
said, but as the I.P.C.C. reports, the preponderance of evidence suggests that global warming is real. As for the Arctic, he said,
Yes, this years winter ice extent is higher than last years, but it is still lower than the long-
term mean.

Weve already burned enough carbon to stave off the ice age emissions
reductions wont help
AFP 07 (Global warming could delay next ice age: study, 8-29,
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Global_warming_could_delay_next_ice_age_study_999.html)

Burning fossil fuels could postpone the next ice age by up to half a million years, researchers
at a British university said Wednesday. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by burning fuels such as coal and oil may cause
enough residual global warming to prevent its onset, said scientists from the University of Southampton in southern England. The world's oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere but in doing so they are becoming more acidic, said a team led by Doctor Toby Tyrrell, which conducted research based on marine chemistry. This, in
turn, dissolves the calcium carbonate in the shells produced by surface-dwelling marine organisms, adding even more carbon to the oceans. The outcome is elevated carbon
dioxide levels for far longer than previously assumed, the scientists argued. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for between five and 200 years before being absorbed by
the oceans, reckons the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, up to one-tenth of the carbon dioxide
currently being emitted will remain in the air for at least 100,000 years, argued Tyrrell. "Our research shows why atmospheric carbon
dioxide will not return to pre-industrial levels after we stop burning fossil fuels," said Tyrrell. "It shows that it if we use up all known fossil
fuels it doesn't matter at what rate we burn them. "The result would be the same if we
burned them at present rates or at more moderate rates; we would still get the same eventual
ice-age-prevention result."

AT: Methane Screw
We control the internal link CO2 causes methane
CORDIS 11 [Community Research and Development Information Service Europa, CORDIS provides information on all EU-
supported R&D activities, 7/18/11, Higher atmospheric CO2 triggers release of potent greenhouse gases,
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&RCN=33634, accessed 12/23/12, JTF]

A new research study led by Trinity College Dublin in Ireland suggests that soil releases the potent
greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide when a bigger concentration of carbon dioxide
(CO2) is found in the atmosphere. The findings, published in the journal Nature, are funded in part by a Marie Curie
Actions grant under the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The researchers believe that the capacity of land
ecosystems to mitigate global warming has been overestimated. Earth continues to be adversely
impacted by human intervention, primarily through land use changes, deforestation and the continued burning of fossil fuels. This
activity leads to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and, in turn, global warming. To date, researchers believed that
because plant growth accelerates following a surge of CO2 levels - since stimulated assimilation of carbon by plants can fuel soil
carbon input and soil carbon storage - the ecosystems on land could also contribute to de-escalating atmospheric
CO2 levels and thus slow climate change. This study shows that this may not be the case. The radiative forcing
of terrestrial ecosystems is not determined by their uptake and release of CO2 alone. The soil
emissions of methane and nitrous oxide may occur in lower atmospheric concentrations than does CO2, but the
ramifications on a global level are significantly greater: 298 times higher for nitrous oxide and 25
times higher for methane. 'This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is
not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought,' explains lead author Dr Kees Jan van
Groenigen, research fellow at the Department of Botany at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. Dr van
Groenigen and colleagues from the United States collated all published research to date from
49 experiments performed in agricultural fields, wetlands, forests and grasslands primarily in
Europe, Asia and North America. All experiments focused on measuring how CO2 in the atmosphere impacts the
capacity of soil to take up or release the nitrous oxide and methane gases. Using meta-analysis, the researchers show how
increasing CO2 stimulates both nitrous oxide and methane emissions; the former affects upland soils
and the latter impacts rice paddies and natural wetlands. 'Until now, there was no consensus on this topic,
because results varied from one study to the next,' says Professor Craig Osenberg of the University of Florida in the United
States, co-author of the study. 'However, two strong patterns emerged when we analysed all the data:
firstly more CO2 boosted soil emissions of nitrous oxide in all the ecosystems, and secondly, in rice
paddies and wetlands, extra CO2 caused soils to release more methane.' Wetlands and rice fields are two major
sources of methane emissions into the atmosphere. According to the researchers, specialised microscopic organisms
in soil are responsible. Just like humans respire oxygen, these microorganisms respire both nitrate and
CO2 chemicals, and generate methane as well. Because they do not need oxygen to subsist, they thrive
when atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise. 'The higher CO2 concentrations reduce plant water use, making soils
wetter, in turn reducing the availability of oxygen in soil, favouring these microorganisms,' Dr van Groenigen says.

Methane leads to a net decrease in emissions newest studies

McCabe, atmospheric scientist, 12 *David, atmospheric scientist, 8/14/12, Without Critical Policy Shifts,
Abundant Natural Gas Will Not Help Slow Climate Change, http://www.catf.us/blogs/ahead/2012/08/14/without-critical-policy-
shifts-abundant-natural-gas-will-not-help-slow-climate-change/, accessed 1/27/13, JTF]

The argument that abundant gas a fossil fuel will help reduce GHG emission is based on the well-known fact that generating
a kWh of electricity with natural gas produces around half the CO2 as generating it with coal.
But its not good enough to look at the CO2 coming out of the power plants: the emissions that come from producing and
transporting the natural gas or coal to the power plants, especially leaks and releases of methane, also matter. Natural gas is
mainly methane, a climate warmer that is dozens of times more potent, pound for pound, than CO2. As more gas is produced
and transported at high pressures in part to fire power plants more methane will leak into the atmosphere. How does the
increased methane stack up against the decreased CO2 from switching from coal to gas? Comparing the total climate impact is tricky
since methane is a more potent warmer, but it does not last as long in the atmosphere, and emissions of
methane arent well measured.1 At least a half-dozen studies examining this question have recently
been published. Some have been balanced efforts, based on the best data we have for leaks and emissions, which wrestle
with the uncertainties that arise from poor knowledge of methane emissions and the different lifetimes of methane and CO2 in the
atmosphere.2 These papers generally find that gas-fired electricity damages climate less than coal-fired electricity, while
acknowledging that its not a simple story3 and that gas will have less advantage if leak rates from gas are higher than currently
estimated (as they may well be). (Unfortunately, some of the studies which have appeared in peer-reviewed journals have not been
balanced and well-sourced.4 Sadly, these latter papers seem to get the most attention in the press.) From the best of the
collective work, we believe that burning natural gas for electricity produces about 30-50% less
greenhouse gas than burning coal, even accounting for the emissions of methane (and carbon
dioxide) from producing and transporting the natural gas. Does this mean that cheap, abundant shale gas will
reduce emissions that are warming our climate?

AT: SO2 Screw
The status quo disproves SO2 screw CO2 emissions are the cause of warming
which proves that CO2 overwhelms the cooling effect

Soot also overwhelms the benefits new studies
The Economist 13 *The Economist, 1/19/13, The new black, http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-
technology/21569686-soot-even-worse-climate-was-previously-thought-new-black, accessed 1/26/13, JTF]

SOOTalso known as black carbonheats up the atmosphere because it absorbs sunlight.
Black things do. That is basic physics. But for years the institutions that focus on climate policy
have played down the role of pollutants such as black carbon that stay in the atmosphere for a short time, and
concentrated on carbon dioxide, which, once generated, tends to remain there. That may soon change. On January 15th, the
fifth day that smog-darkened Beijings air-quality index was registering hazardous (see article), the most comprehensive
study of black carbon yet conducted was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research:
Atmospheres. It concluded that the stuff was the second-most-damaging greenhouse agent
after CO2 and about twice as bad for the climate as had been thought until now. The implications
are profound. This study, a four-year affair conducted under the auspices of the International Global
Atmospheric Chemistry Project, an umbrella group for research into such matters, is based on a lot more
information about soot than was previously available, and a better understanding of how it
affects the climate. It found that the black carbon around at the moment has a warming effect of about
1.1 watts per square metre of the Earths surface (W/m2). This is greater than that of methane and second only
to the 1.7W/m2 of carbon dioxide. An earlier estimate by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) put the black-
carbon effect at only 0.3-0.6W/m2. The higher the figure, the worse the warming. Black carbon is especially
damaging to frozen regions, because when soot falls on snow and ice it increases the amount
of light and heat they absorb. The new assessment may therefore help explain why the Arctic has been melting faster
than anyone had expected. The study argues that warming is likely to be especially marked in the high latitudes of the northern
hemispherenorthern Canada, Alaska, northern Europe and Siberia. It also gives a warning that black carbon, by changing regional
precipitation patterns, may affect Asian monsoons.

Anthropogenic SO2 is different it causes warming
Allen and Sherwood 11 [Robert J. Allen, Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Steven
C. Sherwood, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, The impact of natural versus
anthropogenic aerosols on atmospheric circulation in the Community Atmosphere Model, Clim Dyn (2011) 36:19591978]

Due to the predominance of northern-hemisphere sources for both aerosol types considered, anthropogenic aerosols
warmed the troposphere (and natural aerosols cooled it) more in the northern hemisphere than in the
southern, with changes of order 0.10.3 K in the lower troposphere. Anthropogenic aerosols
consequently shifted the ITCZ northward while natural aerosols shifted it southward. The
northward shift is associated with a weakening of the DJF mean meridional mass circulation and strengthening of the JJA one, with
opposite changes for the southward shift; all are consistent with the radiatively forced changes to inter-hemispheric temperature
gradients. This behavior is consistent with other aerosol studies focusing on the direct effects of BC aerosols (Roberts and Jones
2004; Wang 2004, 2007; Chung and Seinfeld 2005; Yoshimori and Broccoli 2008), and the direct (Yoshimori and Broccoli 2008) and
indirect (Rotstayn et al. 2000; Williams et al. 2001) effects of sulfate aerosols. Changes in Hadley cell strength were
smaller in the fixed-SST experiments because inter-hemispheric temperature gradients were not
able to change as much. These results support previous findings that aerosols affect the
variability of precipitation at low latitudes, for example in the Amazon (Cox et al. 2008) and the Sahel
(Rotstayn and Lohmann 2002). Aerosol forcing is also associated with meridional shifts of the
subtropical jets. In the slab-ocean experiments, anthropogenic aerosols move the subtropical jets
poleward by 0.2_0.3_ each, leading to expansion of the tropics. Natural aerosols produce the opposite
effect. Global emissions of black carbon have generally increased over the latter half of the
twentieth century, although they remain quite uncertain and have probably fallen somewhat since 1990 (Novakov et al.
2003; Ito and Penner 2005; Bond et al. 2007). Global emissions of sulfate aerosols, however, have been declining since the 1970s
(van Aardenne et al. 2001; Smith et al. 2004). Our results indicate that both of these trends should have
contributed to poleward migration of the subtropical jet in the NH, and possibly in the SH, hence
contributing to the observed widening of the tropics from the 1970s through 1990 or so. In fact such widening has been observed
(or inferred from stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming trends), and is larger than predicted by models forced with GHGs
and other forcings (Fu et al. 2006; Seidel et al. 2008; Johanson and Fu 2009). Although some of these models include aerosol forcing,
aerosol absorption is likely underestimated (Sato et al. 2003; Koch et al. 2009). The observed widening of 2.0_4.8_ over 25 years,
however, is much larger than reported here for either aerosol forcing (*0.5_) and does not appear to have stopped in the last
decade or two. Nonetheless, aerosols may have contributed non-negligibly to this widening and, as
discussed above, impacts from past changes in anthropogenic aerosol composition could exceed
those simulated here for the current composition. Arctic oscillation-like changes result from
altered tropospheric temperature gradients, which affect the vertical propagation of wave activity. We argue
that this is because anthropogenic aerosols decrease temperature gradients between low and
mid-latitudes, decreasing the vertically propagating wave activity and increasing equatorward
refraction, with opposite impacts from natural aerosols. The increased refraction causes
acceleration of the stratospheric zonal winds, which eventually propagates back down through
the troposphere (Haynes et al. 1991; Shindell et al. 2001; Stenchikov et al. 2002; Song and Robinson 2004) where it
manifests itself at the surface as sealevel pressure and temperature anomalies. The result is zonal
winds near 60_N increasing by*1 m s-1, temperatures in the high-latitude stratosphere decreasing by (*1 K) and high-latitude sea-
level pressure decreasing by*2 hPa, with anthropogenic aerosol forcing. Similar impacts occur in the simulation of Chung and
Ramanathan (2003) for absorbing aerosols over India only. We found that changes were significant only with fixed SSTs, apparently
because longer wavelength planetary waves which are better able to penetrate into the stratosphereare preferentially excited
by the imposed net aerosol forcing in this case due to the landocean distribution in the northern hemisphere. Regionally restricted
forcings could excite a similar response even with interactive oceans. Because the high-latitude AO impacts are strong only with
fixed SSTs, they do not appear to be robust to variations in ocean behavior, and fixed-SST results are unlikely to represent very well
the impacts of trends in aerosols where the ocean has plenty of time to respond to flux changes at the surface. Moreover, the
observed changes are significantly larger than those reported here even with fixed SST: from 1965 to 1995, mean sea-level pressure
north of 45_N dropped by 2.5 hPa relative to that from 45_N to the equator (Gillett 2005), compared with a peak response here of
0.4 hPa. Similarly, zonal wind increased by 7 m s-1 at 60_N and 50 hPa (Scaife et al. 2005), compared to roughly 1 m s-1 here. Thus,
we find wind and pressure changes that occur in roughly the same ratio as those of recent hard-toexplain trends, but at much
smaller magnitudes. Nonetheless, the decadal variability in aerosol forcing (e.g., SE Asian haze Ramanathan et al.
2001b; e.g., Chung and Ramanathan 2003)as opposed to, say, the more monotonically changing forcing by
greenhouse gases makes it an interesting possibility for explaining variations in the AO, which
also have a strong decadal nature (Feldstein 2002). Given the cancellation found here between absorbing and scattering
aerosol impacts, it is possible that decadal changes in the ratio of black carbon to sulfate could have
exerted large effects. It is also possible that shifts of emissions from one region to another (Streets
et al. 2009) may have affected the AO by influencing rT and the wavelength of perturbations to the
midlatitude flow. It would appear worthwhile to include more realistic aerosol forcing changes in climate models, or at least to
consider more seriously the possible impacts of unknown variations in the distribution and type of aerosols as an additional source
of forcing uncertainty in model experiments.

SO2 is bad causes global dimming that causes extinction
Ramanathan, ocean sciences professor, 05 [Veerabhadran Ramanathan, : Professor of Applied Ocean
Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, Director, Center for Clouds, Chemistry & Climate (C4), Chief
Scientist, Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment, 1-15-2005, Global Dimming, BBC,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml]

RAMANATHAN: Basically the Global Dimming we saw in the North Indian Ocean, it was contributed on
the one hand by the particles themselves shielding the ocean from the sunlight, on the other
hand making the clouds brighter. So this insidious soup, consisting of soot, sulphates, nitrates,
ash and what have you, was having a double whammy on the Global Dimming. NARRATOR: And when he
looked at satellite images, Ramanathan found the same thing was happening all over the world. Over India. Over
China, and extending into the Pacific. Over Western Europe... extending into Africa. Over the British Isles. But it was when scientists
started to investigate the effects of Global Dimming that they made the most disturbing discovery of all. Those more
reflective clouds could alter the pattern of the world's rainfall. With tragic consequences. NEWS
REPORT - MICHAEL BUERK VOICE OVER: Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korum it
lights up a biblical famine, now in the 20th Century. This place say workers here is the closest thing to hell on earth. NARRATOR:
The 1984 Ethiopian famine shocked the world. It was partly caused by a decade's long drought
right across sub-Saharan Africa - a region known as the Sahel. For year after year the summer rains failed. At the time
some scientists blamed overgrazing and poor land management. But now there's evidence that the real culprit was Global Dimming.
The Sahel's lifeblood has always been a seasonal monsoon. For most of the year it is completely dry. But every summer, the heat of
the sun warms the oceans north of the equator. This draws the rain belt that forms over the equator northwards, bringing rain to
the Sahel. But for twenty years in the 1970s and 80s the tropical rain belt consistently failed to shift northwards - and the African
monsoon failed. For climate scientists like Leon Rotstayn the disappearance of the rains had long been a puzzle. He could see that
pollution from Europe and North America blew right across the Atlantic, but all the climate models suggested it should have little
effect on the monsoon. But then Rotstayn decided to find out what would happen if he took the Maldive findings into account. DR
LEON ROTSTAYN (CSIRO Atmospheric Research): What we found in our model was that when we allowed the pollution from Europe
and North America to affect the properties of the clouds in the northern hemisphere the clouds reflected more sunlight back to
space and this cooled the oceans of the northern hemisphere. And to our surprise the result of this was that the tropical rain bands
moved southwards tracking away from the more polluted northern hemisphere towards the southern hemisphere. NARRATOR:
Polluted clouds stopped the heat of the sun getting through. That heat was needed to draw the tropical rains northwards. So the life
giving rain belt never made it to the Sahel. DR LEON ROTSTAYN: So what our model is suggesting is that these droughts in the Sahel
in the 1970s and the 1980s may have been caused by pollution from Europe and North America affecting the properties of the
clouds and cooling the oceans of the northern hemisphere. NARRATOR: Rotstayn has found a direct link between
Global Dimming and the Sahel drought. If his model is correct, what came out of our exhaust
pipes and power stations contributed to the deaths of a million people in Africa, and afflicted 50 million
more. But this could be just of taste of what Global Dimming has in store. PROF VEERABHADRAN RAMANATHAN: The Sahel is just
one example of the monsoon system. Let me take you to anther part of the world. Asia, where the same monsoon brings rainfall to
three point six billion people, roughly half the world's population. My main concern is this air pollution and the Global Dimming will
also have a detrimental impact on this Asian monsoon. We are not talking about few millions of people we are talking about few
billions of people. NARRATOR: For Ramanathan the implications are clear. PROF VEERABHADRAN RAMANATHAN: There is no choice
here we have to cut down air pollution, if not eliminate it altogether.

SO2 cooling cant keep up with global warming
Kaufman, NASA scientist, et al. 91 [Y.J Kaufman, et al, USRA resident scientist at NASA/ Goddard Space Flight
Center, 1991, Fossil Fuel and Biomass Burning Effect on ClimateHeating or Cooling? Journal of Climate, 4, 578588,
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-
0442(1991)004%3C0578%3AFFABBE%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1]

Emission from burning offossil fuels and biomass (associated with deforestation) generates a radiative forcing on the atmosphere
and a possible climate change. Emitted trace gases heat the atmosphere through their greenhouse
effect, while particulates formed from emitted S02 cause cooling by increasing cloud albedos
through alteration of droplet size distributions. This paper reviews the characteristics of the cooling effect and
applies Twomey's theory to check whether the radiative balance favors heating or cooling for the cases of fossil fuel and biomass
burning. It is also shown that although coal and oil emit 120 times as many CO2 molecules as S02 molecules, each S02 molecule is
50-1 100 times more effective in cooling the atmosphere (through the effect of aerosol particles on cloud albedo) than a CO2
molecule is in heating it. Note that this ratio accounts for the large difference in the aerosol (3-10 days) and CO2 (7-100 years)
lifetimes. It is concluded, that the cooling effect from coal and oil burning may presently range from 0.4 to 8 times the heating
effect. Within this large uncertainty, it is presently more likely that fossil fuel burning causes cooling of
the atmosphere rather than heating. Biomass burning associated with deforestation, on the other hand, is more likely
to cause heating of the atmosphere than cooling since its aerosol cooling effect is only half that from fossil fuel burning and its
heating effect is twice as large. Future increases in coal and oil burning, and the resultant increase in
concentration of cloud condensation nuclei, may saturate the cooling effect, allowing the
heating effect to dominate. For a doubling in the CO2 concentration due to fossil fuel burning,
the cooling effect is expected to be 0.1 to 0.3 of the heating effect.


CO2 outweighs SO2 it only stays for a few days
New Scientist 04 *NewScientist.com, 2004, Climate Change, www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climatefaq.jsp+

Right again. One of the nice ironies of this story is that burning coal and oil produces sulphate particles - which make acid rain. These
particles help to shield the more industrialised countries from the full impact of global warming. In some places, such as central
Europe and parts of China, they may have overwhelmed the warming, producing a net cooling. Other aerosols, such as dust from soil
erosion and desertification, can also curb warming. But even if you find the idea of using one form of
pollution to protect us from another, there is a problem. Whereas the average C02 molecule
in the atmosphere lasts for about a century, sulphates and other aerosol molecules persist for
only a few days. This means two things. First, if you turned down the power stations, the world
would get much hotter within a few days. Secondly, aerosols do not accumulate in the
atmosphere in the way that C02 does. If you carry on burning a given amount of fossil fuel,
the cooling effect of the sulphates will remain constant, while the warming effect of C02 will
keep on increasing. So sulphates are not a solution.

Soot overwhelms second largest climate forcing
All Gov 13 *All Gov, 1/18/13, Soot Has Much Bigger Impact on Global Warming than Previously Thought,
http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/soot-has-much-bigger-impact-on-global-warming-than-previously-thought-
130118?news=846790, accessed 1/26/13, JTF]

Scientists have discovered that black carbon, or soot, has been contributing to global warming
on a much larger scale than previously calculated. It now has been determined that soot makes double
the amount of impact on the environment than was previously believed. It is the second
leading contributor to climate change, behind only carbon dioxide. Methane ranks third. Black
carbon, which is produced from diesel engines and wood-fired stoves, has about two-thirds the climate impact
of carbon dioxide, according to research (pdf) published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Impacts
Warming O/W
Warming outweighs every other impact history is irrelevant
Valsamma, physics professor, 12 [K.M. Valsamma, Cochin University of Science and Technology physics
professor, March 2012, Prospecting the Future: Meeting the Challenges Posed by Climate Change, Bonfring International Journal
of Industrial Engineering and Management Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, http://www.bonfring.org/journals/iems/papers/BIJ-002-1074.pdf,
accessed 1/29/13, JTF]

The emissions from human activities is reshaping the carbon cycle. The climate history shows how the changing levels of Green
House Gases and temperature had shaped the climate from time immemorial. Though there is a precedent of Global
Warming in the 4.5 billion years history of the earth, as evidenced by the Eocene Epoch that lasted from 55
million to 38 million years ago, when the atmospheric concentration was about 500 ppm, with the sea level some 100 meters higher
than today, there was one marked difference: unlike now, it was all due to sustained increase in
CO2 that was released from volcanoes over tens of millions of years. During the Eocene Epoch, the shift
in the climate had actually occurred over a period of millions of years, so that whatever living organisms were
there had enough time to adapt themselves to the warming climate. There are scientists who believe
that there are some unrecognized feed backs in the climate system involving types of clouds that only form when CO2 levels are very
high and that our knowledge about this is either very limited or nil. Reconstruction of the Eocene like atmosphere in the climate
models had not shown much warming, as the unrecognized feed backs involving clouds that might have existed at the appropriate
time in the Eocene epoch, had not been factored into the computer modeling. This is the basis for concluding that if an Eocene
like climate were to reenact this time, with the level the atmospheric CO2 doubling in the next
two or three decades over the pre-industrial figures of 280 ppm, it will be both swift and very abrupt. The
global climate system is supposedly loaded with irreversible tipping points which are exacerbated by
emissions [5]. III. GLOBAL WARMING VERSUS BIODIVERSITY The quintessence of what is slowly but surely unfolding before our eyes
is that the planet is on the brink of a disaster , standing in danger of losing much of the rich bio diversity,
combined with a more serious threat of species extinction, as varied and diverse as some of the extremophiles: populations
of bacteria living in spumes of thermal vents on the ocean floor, that multiply in water above the boiling point to the subsurface
litho autotrophic microbial ecosystem,* 6 + living beneath earths surface at a depth of 2 miles. The very thought of a
complete glacial meltdown sends shivers down the spine of people living in low lying areas. It is
on record that Arctic ice is, now reduced to an extent of 1.67 million square miles from what was once a massive expanse of 2.59
million square miles.[7] This is extremely important, since the ice caps are to the ecology what a canary is to the coalmine. More
over, Arctic, is the home to rare species like extremophiles, where the living creatures have the physiological adaptability to live in
the most frigid waters of Arctic by keeping their blood in fluid condition, by what is called biochemical antifreeze. On the other hand
what is happening in the Himalayas is equally appalling. As a result of the constant glacial melt caused by global warming, more and
more lakes of the like of Imja Glacier Lake are getting formed. Places in the vicinity of Himalayas, are actually
becoming danger zones or death traps in the making with the prospect of high altitude glacial debris, known
as moraine, having the potential to release a huge deluge of water, mud and rock up to a height of 13 meters, swamping
homes and fields located as far and wide as 100 .km, leading to total loss of land for a
generation looming large.[8]. One can only shudder at the consequences of a full scale melt of these mountain glaciers.
American Biologist conservationist and the two time Pulitzer prize winner E.O Wilson speaking on
biodiversity had pertinently remarked that genes hold cultures on a leash *9+ and hence the
greatest peril that can befall on this planet is not energy depletion, economic collapse or
even a limited nuclear war , the worst effects of which can be warded off and repaired
within a few generations, but the one that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of
genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.

Generic Extinction
Best methodology shows positive feedbacks will push us past the tipping point
causes extinction.
Guterl 12 Executive Editor of Scientific American, expert in Climate and Environment, Science Policy, citing James Hanson, a
NASA scientist (Fred, Climate Armageddon: How the Worlds Weather Could Quickly Run Amok, 5/25/12; <
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-worlds-weather-could-quickly-run-amok>)//Beddow
The world has warmed since those heady days of Gaia, and scientists have grown gloomier in
their assessment of the state of the world's climate. NASA climate scientist James Hanson has warned of a
"Venus effect," in which runaway warming turns Earth into an uninhabitable desert, with a
surface temperature high enough to melt lead, sometime in the next few centuries. Even Hanson,
though, is beginning to look downright optimistic compared to a new crop of climate scientists, who fret that things
could head south as quickly as a handful of years, or even months, if we're particularly unlucky.
Ironically, some of them are intellectual offspring of Lovelock, the original optimist gone sour. The true gloomsters are scientists
who look at climate through the lens of "dynamical systems," a mathematics that describes
things that tend to change suddenly and are difficult to predict. It is the mathematics of the
tipping pointthe moment at which a "system" that has been changing slowly and predictably
will suddenly "flip." The colloquial example is the straw that breaks that camel's back. Or you can also think of it as a ship that
is stable until it tips too far in one direction and then capsizes. In this view, Earth's climate is, or could soon be,
ready to capsize, causing sudden, perhaps catastrophic, changes. And once it capsizes, it could be next to
impossible to right it again. The idea that climate behaves like a dynamical system addresses some of
the key shortcomings of the conventional view of climate changethe view that looks at the
planet as a whole, in terms of averages. A dynamical systems approach, by contrast, consider
climate as a sum of many different parts, each with its own properties, all of them
interdependent in ways that are hard to predict. One of the most productive scientists in applying dynamical
systems theory to climate is Tim Lenton at the University of East Anglia in England. Lenton is a Lovelockian two generations
removed his mentors were mentored by Lovelock. "We are looking quite hard at past data and observational data that can tell us
something," says Lenton. "Classical case studies in which you've seen abrupt changes in climate data. For example, in the Greenland
ice-core records, you're seeing climate jump. And the end of the Younger Dryas," about fifteen thousand years ago, "you get a
striking climate change." So far, he says, nobody has found a big reason for such an abrupt change in these past eventsno
meteorite or volcano or other event that is an obvious causewhich suggests that perhaps something about the way
these climate shifts occur simply makes them sudden. Lenton is mainly interested in the future. He has tried to
look for things that could possibly change suddenly and drastically even though nothing obvious may trigger them. He's come
up with a short list of nine tipping pointsnine weather systems, regional in scope, that could
make a rapid transition from one state to another.


Warming is anthropogenic and causes extinction best evidence proves.
Morgan 09 professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Dennis Ray, World on Fire: Two Scenarios of the Destruction
of Human Civilization and the Possible Extinction of the Human Race, 2009)//Beddow
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear fire may seem,
the one consolation is that this future can be avoided within a relatively short period of time if
responsible world leaders change Cold War thinking to move away from aggressive wars over
natural resources and towards the eventual dismantlement of most if not all nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, another scenario of human extinction by fire is one that may not so easily be
reversed within a short period of time because it is not a fast-burning fire; rather, a slow burning fire is
gradually heating up the planet as industrial civilization progresses and develops globally. This gradual process and course is long-
lasting; thus it cannot easily be changed, even if responsible world leaders change their thinking about progress and industrial
development based on the burning of fossil fuels. The way that global warming will impact humanity in the future has often been
depicted through the analogy of the proverbial frog in a pot of water who does not realize that the temperature of the water is
gradually rising. Instead of trying to escape, the frog tries to adjust to the gradual temperature change; finally, the heat of the water
sneaks up on it until it is debilitated. Though it finally realizes its predicament and attempts to escape, it is too late; its feeble
attempt is to no avail and the frog dies. Whether this fable can actually be applied to frogs in heated water or not is irrelevant; it
still serves as a comparable scenario of how the slow burning fire of global warming may eventually lead to a
runaway condition and take humanity by surprise. Unfortunately, by the time the politicians
finally all agree with the scientific consensus that global warming is indeed human caused, its
development could be too advanced to arrest; the poor frog has become too weak and enfeebled to get himself
out of hot water. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the WorldMeteorological
Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and
transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of
humaninduced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.*16+. Since then, it has given
assessments and reports every six or seven years. Thus far, it has given four assessments.13 With all prior assessments came attacks
fromsome parts of the scientific community, especially by industry scientists, to attempt to prove that the theory had no basis in
planetary history and present-day reality; nevertheless, as more and more research continually provided concrete
and empirical evidence to confirm the global warming hypothesis, that it is indeed human-
caused, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, the scientific consensus grew stronger that
human induced global warming is verifiable. As a matter of fact, according to Bill McKibben [17], 12 years of
impressive scientific research strongly confirms the 1995 report that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in
appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earths systemsthe balance between incoming and
outgoing solar energy; . . . their findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report a constant strengthening of
the simple basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel. *17+. Indeed, 12 years later, the 2007 report not only
confirms global warming, with a stronger scientific consensus that the slow burn is very likely human caused, but it also finds that
the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before
and the temperature increases would be considerably higher than they have been so far were it
not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet. *17+. Furthermore, almost
everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and
therefore holds more water than cold air, and cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot
nights, and heat waves have become more frequent. *17+. Unless drastic action is taken soon, the average
global temperature is predicted to rise about 5 degrees this century, but it could rise as much as
8 degrees. As has already been evidenced in recent years, the rise in global temperature is
melting the Arctic sheets. This runaway polar melting will inflict great damage upon coastal
areas, which could be much greater than what has been previously forecasted. However, what is
missing in the IPCC report, as dire as it may seem, is sufficient emphasis on the less likely but still plausible worst case scenarios,
which could prove to have the most devastating, catastrophic consequences for the long-term future of human civilization. In other
words, the IPCC report places too much emphasis on a linear progression that does not take sufficient account of the dynamics of
systems theory, which leads to a fundamentally different premise regarding the relationship between industrial civilization and
nature.


Warming and Co2 causes extinction rapidly no risk of turns
Leslie 10 (John Leslie The Risk that Humans Will Soon Be Extinct Philosophy Volume 85 / Issue 04 / October 2010, pp 447
463) Cambridge Journals

Look next at the possibility of utterly disastrous climate change, a greenhouse-effect
runaway. The geological record reveals that major jumps in temperature sometimes happen quite quickly. Now, to get the
consensus needed for persuading the politicians in Rio in 1992 the International Panel on Climate Change disregarded worst-case
predictions and latest-available evidence. It even dealt with biological feedback loops in just one sentence:Biological
feedbacks have not yet been taken into account.Has the Panel since changed its ways? There is
little sign of it. Politicians demand findings that are very uncontroversial and the IPCC, remember, was created to provide exactly
such findings. But scenarios involving runaway overheating are readily available, biological feedback loops often
playing crucial roles. For instance: (i) Ocean waters warm up, becoming less able to absorb man-
made carbon dioxide, the factor chiefly responsible for the change; (ii) waters rich in nutrients rise to the
warmed sea surface less often so that phytoplankton grow more slowly, absorb less carbon
dioxide and generate less dimethyl sulphide, a substance which encourages the birth of the
clouds that cool us in daytime; (iii) many phytoplankton die because carbon dioxide has
acidified the oceans; (iv) hotter weather increases production of carbon dioxide by plants
and soil microbes; (v) tundra melt and peat bogs dry out, producing yet more carbon dioxide
and vast amounts of another greenhouse gas, methane, molecule for molecule perhaps
thirty times as powerful; (vi) resultant changes in high altitude clouds make them trap more
heat; (vii) drought then kills vegetation, returning carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; (viii) next,
the ravages of methane and other greenhouse gases deplete the hydroxyls which are so
important in destroying those gases; (ix) there follows a retreat of sea ice so that less sunlight is reflected back into
space; (x) heating of the oceans thereupon releases trillions of tons of methane which are at
present locked up in the clathrates of the continental shelves; (xi) the new heat produces much
more water vapour, an extremely important greenhouse gas, so that a greenhouse runaway
occurs. For advanced life forms, Earth becomes uninhabitable.


Extinction
Guardian 10 ( Guardian News Did Deepwater methane hydrates cause the BP Gulf explosion?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/20/deepwater-methane-hydrates-bp-gulf, Thursday 20 May 2010)
The vast deepwater methane hydrate deposits of the Gulf of Mexico are an open secret in big
energy circles. They represent the most tantalizing new frontier of unconventional energy a potential source of hydrocarbon
fuel thought to be twice as large as all the petroleum deposits ever known. For the oil and gas industry, the substances are also
known to be the primary hazard when drilling for deepwater oil. Methane hydrates are volatile compounds natural gas
compressed into molecular cages of ice. They are stable in the extreme cold and crushing weight of deepwater, but
are extremely dangerous when they build up inside the drill column of a well . If destabilized by heat or a
decrease in pressure, methane hydrates can quickly expand to 164 times their volume. Survivors of the BP rig
explosion told interviewers that right before the April 20 blast, workers had decreased the pressure in the drill column and applied
heat to set the cement seal around the wellhead. Then a quickly expanding bubble of methane gas shot up
the drill column before exploding on the platform on the ocean's surface. Even a solid steel
pipe has little chance against a 164-fold expansion of volume something that would render
a man six feet six inches tall suddenly the height of the Eiffel Tower. Scientists are well aware of the
awesome power of these strange hydrocarbons . A sudden large scale release of methane hydrates is
believed to have caused a mass extinction 55 million years ago. Among planners concerned
with mega-disasters, their sudden escape is considered to be a threat comparable to an
asteroid strike or nuclear war. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Livermore, Ca.-based weapons design
center, reports that when released on a large scale, methane hydrates can even cause tsunamis. So it is not
surprising to anyone who knows about the physics of these compounds that the Deepwater Horizon rig was lost like a waterfly
crumpled by a force of nature scientists are still just getting to know.


Melting sea ice causes massive decrease in biodiversity
Lefeber 8/24/2012 (Rene DOCTOR CHAIR IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Polar Warming: An Opportune
Inconveniencehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151241

It is expected that polar warming will result in a decrease of biological diversity of the Polar
Regions. Together with the melting of sea ice, not only the habitats of organisms living on sea
ice, such as seals and polar bears, will be melting away, but also of organisms living at the
underside of the sea ice. Animal and plant species will become extinct if the non-sustainable
use of such species has not already produced such extinction. The fragile ecosystems of the
Polar Regions will be thrown off balance and may not be preserved

Ag
Warming kills agriculture turns war and overcomes all defense. Adaptation
cant solve.
Zhang et al 07 professor of geography at University of Hong Kong/ Peter Brecke from Sam Nunn School of International
Affairs, Georgia Institute of Tech/others (David D., Global Climate Change, War, and Population Decline in Recent Human History,
10/23/07; < http://www.pnas.org/content/104/49/19214.full#aff-1>)//Beddow
Although scientists have warned of possible social perils resulting from climate change, the impacts of long-term climate change on
social unrest and population collapse have not been quantitatively investigated. In this study, high-resolution paleo-climatic data
have been used to explore at a macroscale the effects of climate change on the outbreak of war and population decline in the
preindustrial era. We show that long-term fluctuations of war frequency and population changes
followed the cycles of temperature change. Further analyses show that cooling impeded agricultural production,
which brought about a series of serious social problems, including price inflation, then successively war outbreak, famine, and
population decline successively. The findings suggest that worldwide and synchronistic warpeace,
population, and price cycles in recent centuries have been driven mainly by long-term climate
change. The findings also imply that social mechanisms that might mitigate the impact of climate change were not significantly
effective during the study period. Climate change may thus have played a more important role and
imposed a wider ranging effect on human civilization than has so far been suggested. Findings of this
research may lend an additional dimension to the classic concepts of Malthusianism and Darwinism. Scientists have noted that
social activities heavily depend on climate. They have also pointed out that temperature probably
influences our lives more than any other climatic factor and human society is especially
vulnerable to large, long-term temperature changes (1). However, scientific research on the social effects of
climate change has tended to focus on the economic costs of current and future climate change and has neglected the study of how
societies have historically reacted to long-term climate change. This neglect is unfortunate because a better understanding of how
past climatic changes have influenced human society may help us better understand our future prospects. Recently, important
attempts have been made to use high-resolution, reconstructed paleo-climatic data to elucidate individual cases of prehistoric
cultural/population collapses caused by agricultural failure in the Middle East, United States, and China (24). Webster (5) pointed
out that warfare was an adaptive ecological choice in prehistoric societies with limited resources
and growing populations, although he was not able to use systematic, scientific data to support his conclusion. The concept
of environmental conflict has been suggested by several researchers, but they focus only on conflicts caused by short-term climate
variations and meteorological events (69). Galloway (10) found that long-term climate change controlled population size in middle-
latitude areas. However, his finding lacked quantitative precision because of the absence of high-resolution climate records at the
time. We studied a long span of Chinese history and found that the number of war outbreaks and population
collapses in China is significantly correlated with Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature
variations and that all of the periods of nationwide unrest, population collapse, and dynastic
change occurred in the cold phases of this period (1113). As a result of recent scientific breakthroughs in
establishing more precise paleo-climatic records [see supporting information (SI) Text ], we extend the earlier study to the global and
continental levels between A.D. 1400 and A.D. 1900, during the Little Ice Age (LIA; see SI Text ). The hypothesis we propose posits
that long-term climate change has significant direct effects on land-carrying capacity (as
measured by agricultural production). Fluctuation of the carrying capacity in turn affects the
food supply per capita. A shortage of food resources in populated areas increases the
likelihood of armed conflicts, famines, and epidemics, events that thus reduce population size.
As a feedback mechanism, population decline has a dominant tendency to increase the food supply per capita (seen in decreasing
food prices), which results in relative peace and fast population growth. The interactions among these components in a social
system create an important rhythm of macrohistory in agricultural societies. The simplified pathways of the above chain reactions
and feedback loops are represented in SI Fig. 3. With respect to the character of the causal pathways, the relation between
climate and agricultural production has been demonstrated by many empirical studies (10,
14). Under ecological stress, adaptive choices for animal species are the reduction of population size, migration, and dietary
change. Depopulation typically takes place through starvation and cannibalism. Humans have more pathways, social
mechanisms, to adapt to climate change and mitigate ecological stress. Besides migration, they
include warfare, economic change, innovation, trade, and peaceful resource redistribution. We
believe that in late agrarian society established political boundaries in populated areas limited mass migration; the result of such
mass migration, when it occurred, often was war. Economic change was a costly and slow process that involved changing cultures,
technologies, and habits. When the speed of human innovation and its transfer were not fast enough
to keep pace with rapid ecological change, famine and disease became difficult to avoid. Trade
and redistribution under the condition of shrinking resources would not help much because
the ecological stress was at a global or very large regional scale. Finally, human social
development in the form of international and national institutions was not strong enough to
buffer the tensions caused by food resource scarcity. Therefore, war and population decline
became common consequences of climate-induced ecological stress in the late preindustrial era. Recent
developments in resource and environmental studies (e.g., refs. 8, 9, 15, and 16) suggest that limited resources and environmental
degradation would have caused armed conflicts in human history. However, these perceived climatewarpopulation decline
sequences have never been substantiated with scientific evidence consisting of long-term time series. In the following sections, we
verify our hypothesis and evaluate the role of climate change on war outbreak and population decline with empirical data at global
and continental scales.

Warming kills agricultural production CO2 fertilization is negligible by
comparison.
Hofstrand 11 Agricultural Economist, Co-Director Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, Iowa State University Extension
(Don, Climate Change Beginning to Impact Global Crop Production, September 2011; <
http://www.agmrc.org/renewable_energy/climate_change_and_agriculture/climate-change-beginning-to-impact-global-crop-
production/>)//Beddow
The demand for world agriculture output will grow exponentially over coming decades due to
world population growth and expanding world economies. At the same time, the agriculture
sector will be impacted by changes in climate that will challenge the productivity of the
worlds agriculture resources. World population will continue to grow at a rapid rate. World population in 2010 was 6.9
billion people. By 2050 it is expected to grow to 9.3 billion people. This is a 35 percent increase in just 39 years or the addition of an
average of 60 million people every year. For perspective this increase is equivalent to adding the population of the United States
eight times to world population by 2050. The worlds agriculture resource base will be required to increase
production to meet this increase. In addition to population growth there has been an explosion of people
moving out of poverty and into the middle class. This has occurred in several countries of the world but primarily
in China and India that collectively make up over one-third of the worlds population. Rapid economic growth in these countries has
resulted in increasing livings standards for a significant portion of their populations. As living standards increase,
peoples diets change. Diets high in meat, which usually occurs as living standards improve,
increase the demands on the agriculture sector because multiple pounds of feed are required
to produce a pound of meat. At the same time, millions of people in Africa and around the world remain in poverty.
These people live in an environment of food insecurity where a weather event can quickly move
them to a situation of food shortages. People in these regions are very sensitive to agricultural commodity price
changes. They spend a much larger percentage of their incomes on food as compared to people in the developed world. Climate
change has begun to impact the agricultural landscape. The continuation of these changes due to rising
greenhouse gases will challenge the agriculture sector to finds ways to maintain and improve
productivity. Recent research has shown that climate change is already beginning to have a
negative impact on global crop production levels. The research project, a collaborative effort by researchers at
Stanford University, Columbia University and the National Bureau of Economic Research, examined the impact of climate change on
the global production of maize, wheat, rice and soybeans from 1980 to 2008. These are the four largest commodity crops and
represent roughly 75 percent of the calories that humans directly or indirectly consume. Access to the report can be found at
Climate Trends and Global Crop Production since 1980. The research is focused on temperature and precipitation changes over this
period. A database of yield response models were developed to evaluate the impact of these climate trends on crop yields over the
corresponding 1980 to 2008 time period. In addition, the positive yield impact of increased carbon dioxide levels was added to the
analysis. Assessing the impact of past trends on agricultural crop yields will help project the impact of future trends on yields during
coming decades. It will also help identify which agricultural regions will be impacted the most. Temperature Global average
temperatures have risen by about 0.13 degrees Centigrade (.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 1950. It is expected to
increase to about 0.2 degrees Centigrade (.35 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade over the next two to three decades. The
temperature increase in agriculture areas is expected to be substantially higher. In many
agricultural locations, temperature trends increased and are more than twice the historic
standard deviation, as shown in Figure 1. This includes Europe, Northern China, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil. Sixty five
percent of countries experienced temperature trends in crop production regions of at least one standard deviation for maize and
rice. The corresponding percent of countries was 75 percent for wheat and 53 percent for soybeans. About a quarter of the
countries experience trends of more than two standard deviations for each crop. By comparison, trends were evenly distributed
about zero during the previous 20 year period (1960-1980). 1/ Linear trends for the growing season for the predominant crop in
each grid cell. 2/ Trends are expressed as the ratio of the total trend for the 29 year period (1980-2008) divided by the historic
standard deviation for the 1960-2000 period. 3/ Only cells with at least one percent of the area covered by either maize, wheat, rice
or soybeans are shown. Precipitation Precipitation trends were less dramatic than temperature trends as shown in Figure 2. Modest
increases or decreases in precipitation are evident in large parts of the worlds agricultural regions. Some parts of the world have
experienced significant increases in precipitation while others have had significant decreases. However, when averaged, the effects
of changes in growing season rainfall are near zero. Figure 2. Linear Trend in Precipitation, 1980-2008, measured in standard
deviations 1/ 2/ 3/ 1/ Linear trends for the growing season for the predominant crop in each grid cell. 2/ Trends are expressed as the
ratio of the total trend for the 29 year period (1980-2008) divided by the historic standard deviation for the 1960-2000 period. 3/
Only cells with at least one percent of the area covered by either maize, wheat, rice or soybeans are shown. Carbon Dioxide
Increased levels of carbon dioxide have a positive impact on plant growth. A plant takes in atmospheric carbon
dioxide (CO2) during the photosynthesis process, utilizes the carbon (C) to build the plant, and
releases the oxygen (O2) back into the atmosphere. For many crops, the photosynthetic
pathway allows the plant to respond to elevated levels of atmospheric CO2. These are referred to as C3
plants and include wheat, rice, soybeans and most weeds. However, the photosynthetic pathway of C4 plants
such as maize does not respond to elevated levels of CO2, so the impact on yield is likely much
smaller. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased by 47 parts per million (386 ppm less 339 ppm) over the
1980 to 2008 time period (Figure 3). Experiments of the impact of elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 indicated that the 47 ppm
increase would increase the yields of C3 crops by approximately three percent. Figure 3. World Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Levels The affect of temperature and precipitation trends on the yields of maize, rice, wheat and soybeans is shown in Table 1. The
impact on yields is greater for temperature than for precipitation. The greatest yield impact of temperature was on wheat followed
by maize. When the three percent yield gain from elevated CO2 levels is added to wheat, soybeans and rice, the yield response for
rice and soybeans become positive but remained negative for maize and wheat. Estimated changes in yields for maize, rice, wheat
and soybeans for major producing countries are shown in Figure 4. The country with the largest impact was wheat production in
Russia with an estimated negative yield impact of almost 15 percent. For the U.S., yield changes due to temperature and
precipitation trends are negligible for maize, wheat and soybeans. This corresponds to the small temperature and precipitation
trends shown in Figures 1 and 2. Yield impacts were smaller for rice than the other crops. The confidence intervals of the yield
estimates were larger for soybeans than the other crops. Figure 4. Estimated net impact of climate trends from 1980 to 2008 on crop
yields for major producing countries and for global production. Values are expressed as percent of average yields. A = Maize, B =
Rice, C = Wheat, D = Soybeans. * Gray bars show median estimate and error bars show 5 percent to 95 percent confidence internal
from bootstrap resampling with 500 replicates. Red and blue dots show median estimate of impact for temperature trend and
precipitation trend, respectively. Note, the sum of the temperature (red dots) and precipitation (blue dots) estimates equals the
total estimate shown by the gray bars. The researchers calculated the impact of the climate trends on global crop yields. Maize
production would have been about six percent higher and wheat production about four percent
higher had the climate trends since 1980 not existed. The effects on rice and soybeans were lower and not
statistically significant. The researchers also calculated the impact of climate trends on global crop prices using price elasticities.
The estimated changes in crop production excluding and including carbon dioxide fertilization
resulted in commodity price increases of about 20 percent and about 5 percent respectively. The
analysis does not take into account the potentially mitigating impact of crop production climate adaptation strategies currently
taking place such as where crops are grown and how crops are grow (seed varieties, planting dates, etc.) Some adaptations
strategies are already taking place in the U.S. Midwest. However, it also does not take into account the negative impact of the
increased occurrence of extreme weather events associated with global warming. An increase in the frequency of extreme weather
events has been documented in the U.S. Midwest (Climate Change in Iowa). Implications To meet this expanding world demand,
agriculture must become more adept at anticipating climate trends and finding ways of adapting to these changes. The research
report shows that the impact of temperature on crop yields is a larger factor than the impact of precipitation. This would indicate
that adaptation strategies should focus more on temperature changes than on precipitation changes. The research report concluded
that North America is the agricultural region least impacted by temperature and precipitation changes. The U.S. already accounts for
about forty percent of the worlds production of corn and soybeans and a substantial portion of the worlds wheat. The U.S. share
may increase if these patterns persist and the rest of the world is increasingly challenged by temperature increases. It will have
significant implications for the world grain trade and the role of the U.S. in feeding the world. Most of the increase in agricultural
production over the last century is the result of yield increases rather than agricultural land area expansion. However, due to
the worlds rapidly growing demand for food and the negative yield impact of climate change
on food production, there will be great pressure to expand the worlds agricultural land area.
Expanding the agricultural land area may significantly increase carbon dioxide emissions due
to the release of carbon from converting native areas to farmland as discussed in Agricultural
Research Combats Climate Change. Increased investments in agricultural research in the U. S. and across the world is
needed to meet the challenge of world food production. However, this must be combined with programs to substantially reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. In the long run, agricultural research will not be able to compensate for the
devastating effects of climate change on world agricultural production.


Negative impacts outweigh the positive our evidence is comparative.
MAFF 07 Japanese Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Research Council (Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Impact of
Global Warming on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and Possible Countermeasures in Japan, Report on Research and
Development in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries No. 23, 2007; < http://www.s.affrc.go.jp/docs/e/pdf/no23e.pdf>)//Beddow
The report of Working Group 2 on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability reveals that global warming is having an
impact on nature and society around the world, such as the melting of glaciers and frozen
tundra, advancement in the springtime phenomenon in animals and plants, and habitat shifts.
Global warming is expected to have a serious impact on water resources, ecosystems, food
production and other aspects of life. For agricultural production, low latitudes such as the
tropics are more vulnerable than high latitudes to global warming. The IPCC Fourth
Assessment Report predicts that grain production will decrease in low latitudes and increase in
middle-high latitudes if the global mean temperature increases 2 to 3C. This means that global warming
will have a greater impact on developing countries (most of which are located at low latitudes in Asia and Africa) than on developed
countries such as Japan. However, a temperature increase of more than 2 to 3C will probably result in
decreased grain production in both low and high latitudes. The negative impact of global
warming will be greater than the positive impact.


Warming kills agricultural production weeds, evaporation, humidity, storms,
flooding, soil erosion, pests, disease and worker efficiency. Subsumes CO2
fertilization turn.
ARM - education.arm.gov/teacher-tools/background/possible-benefits
Given the need for caution, it may still be possible to make a few general comments. With more carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, the rate of photosynthesis in most tropical plants will increase. Photosynthesis
requires carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight in order to take place. The so-called C3 plants [all major
tropical plants except corn (corn), sugar cane, and pineapple] could increase their production of biomass by up to 30 percent.
However, increased photosynthesis will also increase weed growth, which could limit the
yields of certain edible plants. Higher temperatures will lead to a greater rate of evaporation, as
the hotter the air, the more water vapor it can contain. In some places, especially limestone islands, this
could possibly lead to greater occurrence of droughts in low-lying areas, and the soil fertility
could decline. Higher temperatures and greater evaporation from ocean surfaces may lead to
an increase in the air humidity. With greater air humidity and higher sea temperatures, there
could be a greater frequency of severe cyclones during the cyclone season, and a possible
lengthening of the cyclone season. Warm temperatures and higher humidity may well lead generally to an increased
cloud cover and greater rainfall. So, low-lying areas could be subjected to more flooding [by rain and the
sea], soils will suffer greater leaching and loss of fertility, and the hotter, more humid conditions
will favor the incubation of agricultural pests and diseases. However, greater rainfall will produce more rapid
chemical weathering in the subsoil and parent material [rocks], so releasing more nutrients into the soil. Higher
temperatures and humidity will undoubtedly lead to greater heat stress for humans. Outdoor
workers, in particular, will feel the heat more acutely, and probably be less efficient. Animals,
too, will suffer from heat stress, and their reproductive abilities may decline. On mountainous islands,
increased temperatures should mean that the land can be cultivated to higher levels than at present. Places that are -300 meters
high will experience similar temperatures to those found today at sea level. In Papua New Guinea, coffee will be grown at higher
altitudes, on steeper slopes, and overall, the amount of productive agricultural land could increase by as much as 10 percent. It is
possible that warmer temperatures can lead to a shortening of the time needed for crops to
ripen, and this might mean that fruit are smaller, with a lower overall yield.




Biodiversity
Warming kills bio-d that causes extinction
Hansen, environmental science professor, 08 [James, Director @ NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies and Adjunct Prof. Earth and Env. Sci. @ Columbia U. Earth Institute, Tipping Point: Perspective of a Climatologist,
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Hansen_1.pdf]

The warming that has already occurred, the positive feedbacks that have been set in motion, and the additional
warming in the pipeline together have brought us to the precipice of a planetary tipping point. We are at
the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West
Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenlands ice. Little additional forcing is needed to trigger these feedbacks
and magnify global warming. If we go over the edge, we will transition to an environment far outside the range that has
been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return within any foreseeable future generation. Casualties would include more
than the loss of indigenous ways of life in the Arctic and swamping of coastal cities. An intensified hydrologic cycle will produce both
greater floods and greater droughts. In the US, the semiarid states from central Texas through Oklahoma and both Dakotas would
become more drought-prone and ill suited for agriculture, people, and current wildlife. Africa would see a great expansion of dry
areas, particularly southern Africa. Large populations in Asia and South America would lose their primary dry season freshwater
source as glaciers disappear. A major casualty in all this will be wildlife. State of the Wild Climate change is emerging
while the wild is stressed by other pressures habitat loss, overhunting, pollution, and invasive
speciesand it will magnify these stresses. Species will respond to warming at differing paces, affecting many others
through the web of ecological interactions. Phenological events, which are timed events in the life cycle that are usually tied to
seasons, may be disrupted. Examples of phenological events include when leaves and flowers emerge and when animals depart for
migration, breed, or hibernate. If species depend on each other during those timesfor pollination or food the pace at which they
respond to warmer weather or precipitation changes may cause unraveling, cascading effects within ecosystems. Animals and plants
respond to climate changes by expanding, contracting, or shifting their ranges. Isotherms, lines of a specific average temperature,
are moving poleward by approximately thirty-five miles (56 km) per decade, meaning many species ranges may in turn shift at that
pace.4 Some already are: the red fox is moving into Arctic fox territory, and ecologists have observed that 943 species across all taxa
and ecosystems have exhibited measurable changes in their phenologies and/or distribution over the past several decades.5
However, their potential routes and habitat will be limited by geographic or human-made obstacles, and other species territories.
Continued business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions threaten many ecosystems, which
together form the fabric of life on Earth and provide a wide range of services to humanity.
Some species face extinction. The following examples represent a handful. Of particular concern are polar species, because they are
being pushed off the planet. In Antarctica, Adelie and emperor penguins are in decline, as shrinking sea ice has reduced the
abundance of krill, their food source.6 Arctic polar bears already contend with melting sea ice, from which they hunt seals in colder
months. As sea ice recedes earlier each year, populations of polar bears in Canada have declined by about 20 percent, with the
weight of females and the number of surviving cubs decreasing a similar amount. As of this writing, the US Fish and Wildlife Service
is still considering protecting polar bears, but only after it was taken to court for failure to act on the mounting evidence that polar
bears will suffer greatly due to global warming. 7 Life in many biologically diverse alpine regions is similarly in danger of being
pushed off the planet. When a given temperature range moves up a mountain, the area with those climatic conditions becomes
smaller and rockier, and the air thinner, resulting in a struggle for survival for some alpine species. In the Southwest US, the endemic
Mount Graham red squirrel survives on a single Arizona mountain, an island in the sky, an isolated green spot in the desert. The
squirrels, protected as an endangered species, had rebounded to a population of over 500, but their numbers have since declined to
between 100 and 200 animals.8 Loss of the red squirrel will alter the forest because its middens are a source of food and habitat for
chipmunks, voles, and mice. A new stress on Graham red squirrels is climatic: increased heat, drought, and fires. Heat-stressed
forests are vulnerable to prolonged beetle infestation and catastrophic fires. Rainfall still occurs, but it is erratic and heavy, and dry
periods are more intense. The resulting forest fires burn hotter, and the lower reaches of the forest cannot recover. In the marine
world, loggerhead turtles are also suffering. These great creatures return to beaches every two to three years to bury a clutch of
eggs. Hatchlings emerge after two months and head precariously to the sea to face a myriad of predators. Years of conservation
efforts to protect loggerhead turtles on their largest nesting area in the US, stretching over 20 miles of Florida coastline, seemed to
be stabilizing the South Florida subpopulation. 9 Now climate change places a new stress on these turtles. Florida beaches are
increasingly lined with sea walls to protect against rising seas and storms. Sandy beaches seaward of the walls are limited and may
be lost if the sea level rises substantially. Some creatures seem more adaptable to climate change. The armadillo, a prehistoric
critter that has been around for over 50 million years, is likely to extend its range northward in the US. But the underlying
cause of the climatic threat to the Graham red squirrel and other speciesfrom grizzlies, whose springtime food sources
may shift, to the isolated snow vole in the mountains of southern Spainis business-as-usual use of fossil fuels.
Predicted warming of several degrees Celsius would surely cause mass extinctions. Prior major
warmings in Earths history, the most recent occurring 55 million years ago with the release of
large amounts of Arctic methane hydrates,10 resulted in the extinction of half or more of the
species then on the planet.

Climate Flips
Warming causes climate flips ends in extinction
Dyer, history PhD, 03 [Gwynne, PhD in military and Middle Eastern history from the University of London, 7-4-2003,
Spectator, Factiva]

The problem is that global warming was the first aspect of climate change to catch the public's attention and, for the vast majority of
people, it remains the only threat - if indeed it is a threat. After all, warmer isn't necessarily worse, and anyway, it's a gradual
process and we'll all probably be safely dead before it gets too serious. Climate researchers have known this is untrue for about 20
years, since the evidence of the Greenland ice-cores became available, but it has still not affected the public debate. Those
cores go down two miles into the ice-cap and bring up evidence of weather from up to 250,000 years ago. What shocked
researchers realised when they examined the cores is climate change - real climate change - is not
gradual at all. It's a threshold phenomenon, a sudden flip into a radically different state, that
may then persist for a very long time. The real danger we face is that gradual warming of the sort we are
experiencing now will trigger a sudden cooling that could drop average global temperatures
by 5C (41F) in 10 years. The sudden cooling, and the accompanying droughts, would destroy most of
the agriculture that now sustains six billion of us, and at least 90 per cent of the human race
would be killed by famine and war in a matter of a decade or so. These abrupt climate changes
could herald the beginning of the next Ice Age - but climatic flips like this can also occur for lengthy
periods - even in the midst of warm-and-wet interglacial periods like the present. WE do still live in the Ice Age, of
course. For the past three million years, ever since continental drift closed the channel between North America to South America
and changed the ocean currents, glaciers have covered more than a third of the planet's surface, almost 90 per cent of the time. The
recent pattern has been around 100,000 years of freeze, followed by a much shorter warm period. The previous interglacial era,
which ended 117,000 years ago, was only 13,000 years long, so at 15,000 years we're already into overtime on this one - but we
don't even need a major Ice Age to do the damage. The process by which the climate flips is now fairly well understood. The
trigger is a phase of gradual warming that, either through glacial melting or just more rainfall,
increases the amount of fresh water on the ocean surface between Labrador, Greenland and Norway. This
critical part of the North Atlantic is where the Gulf Stream's water, having become salty and dense, sinks to the bottom
and flows back south - but, if it is diluted by too much fresh water on the surface, it doesn't sink and the
circuit is broken. The whole global climate suddenly flips into a cool, dry phase that can last
for many centuries before warmer conditions return: There have been two such episodes, at 12,500 years ago and 8,500
years ago, even since the end of the last Ice Age. Or the cool, dry phase could last for 100,000 years if other conditions, like the
shape of the earth's orbit and the tilt of its axis, have already put us on the brink of a new Ice Age. The flips of the past
were caused by natural warming of one kind or another but, by adding man-made warming to the problem, we are
making it far more dangerous. We have built entire human civilisations, and increased our
population a thousandfold since the last cool, dry episode. All of that is at risk if the climate
flips , and yet the public debate is still about gradual change.

Arctic Tribes
Warming destroys Arctic tribes
Epa 13 (Environmental Protection Agency Alaska Impacts & Adaptation, 6/21/2013
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/alaska.html)

People in Alaska are already feeling the impact of climate change. In many parts of the state,
the changing climate has negatively affected the livelihood, settlements, and well-being of
residents. Alaska Natives fish in ocean and inland waters. They also hunt animals such as polar
bears, walruses, seals, and caribou for food. As climate change reduces these species' critical
habitats, declines in their population threaten not only the livelihood of Alaska Natives, but
also their cultural and social identity. As the supply of fish and game declines, hunters and
fishers are forced to seek alternative sources of food. Along Alaska's northwestern coast,
increased coastal erosion is causing some shorelines to retreat at rates averaging tens of feet
per year. [2] Here, melting sea ice has reduced natural coastal protection. In Shishmaref,
Kivalina, and other Alaska Native Villages, erosion has caused homes to collapse into the sea.
Severe erosion has forced some Alaska Native Villages' populations to relocate in order to
protect lives and property.

Diseases
GW causes infectious diseases to spread
Khasnis, disease expert, and Nettleman, medicine professor, 05 [Athul Khasnis, Expert on
Rheumatologic and Immunologic Disease and global warming, and Mary Nettleman, 10-8-2005, Chair, Department of Medicine,
Professor of Medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine, Global Warming and Infectious Disease, ScienceDirect,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0188440905001517]

It is impossible to quantify the exact risk posed by climate change. With particular reference to infectious diseases, the impact
depends on the complex interaction between the human host population and the causative infectious agent. Important human
factors include crowding, food scarcity, poverty, and local environmental decline. Some health effects of climate change may result
from indirect impacts on natural ecosystems. For example, altered climatic conditions can change the habitats of
vectors such as mosquitoes or rats and affect the parasites they carry. Changing the abundance and geographic range of carriers
and parasites could shift the seasonal occurrence of many infectious diseases and cause them to
spread. The effect of globalwarming depends heavily on the ability of humans and public health systems to adapt. Human
migration and economic stresses from climate variability could threaten human settlement and
seriously overwhelm the public health infrastructure. This scenario might be worsened further by
malnutrition due to crop failure. Facing this complex threat makes interdisciplinary cooperation among health
professionals, climatologists, environmental biologists and social scientists imperative to understand and effectively manage this
threat that could result from globalwarming. Renewed understanding of linkages between public health and global life-
support systems is emerging in the literature (11). New collaborative efforts can confront these tough challenges through advances
in preventive medicine. In much of the world, the current increasing life expectancy is likely to be blunted by increased difficulty in
accessing basic requirements such as sanitation and potable water. The direct and indirect impacts of climate
change on human health have a considerable toll on life, resources (natural and financial) and working manpower.
Altered environmental influences would also mean courting environmental disasters such as
famines and floods. It known that non-vector-borne infectious diseasessuch as salmonellosis, cholera, and
giardiasiscan thrive under these circumstances (12). Thus, the impact of climate change depends on several factors.
Although exact predictions are impossible, there are significant areas of concern throughout the world (Table 1) (13).

Disease causes extinction
Yu 09 [Victoria, Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, 5-22, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-
the-uncertainty-of-our-fate, 6-23-11]

A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known
case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines
have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are
constantly emerging a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated
human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing
virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIVs rapid and constant
evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the viruss abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIVs use of reverse transcriptase, which
does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily,
though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in
the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the
immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more
consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and
antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of
influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread
quickly, this lag time could potentially lead to a global influenza pandemic, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu
managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as
the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations
were required to convert the original viral strain which could only infect birds into a
human-viable strain (10).

Hydrogen Sulfide
Warming triggers hydrogen sulfide poisoning and leads to extinction
Ward 10
(Peter Douglas Ward is a paleontologist and professor of Biology and of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington,
Seattle, and has written popular science works for a general audience. He is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum. He is also
a NASA astrobiologist, Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences, The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps,
June 29, 2010)

In the rest of this chapter I will support a contention that within several millennia (or less) the planet will see a
changeover of the oceans from their current mixed states to something much different and dire. Oceans will
become stratified by their oxygen content and temperature, with warm, oxygen-free water lining the ocean
basins. Stratified oceans like this in the past (and they were present for most of Earths history) have always been
preludes to Biotic catastrophe. Because the continents were in such different positions at that time, models we use today
to understand ocean current systems are still crude when it comes to analyzing the ancient oceans, such as those of the Devonian or
Permian Periods. Both times witnessed major mass EXTinctions, and these EXTinctions were somehow tied to events in the sea. Yet
catastrophic as it was, the event that turned the Canning Coral Reef of Devonian age into the Canning Microbial Reef featured at the
start of this chapter was tame compared to that ending the 300 million- to 251 million-year-old Permian Period, and for this reason
alone the Permian ocean and its fate have been far more studied than the Devonian. But there is another reason to concentrate on
the Permian mass EXTinction: it took place on a world with a climate more similar to that of today than anytime in the Devonian.
Even more important, it was a world with ice sheets at the poles, something the more tropical Devonian Period may never have
witnessed. For much of the Permian Period, the Earth, as it does today, had abundant ice caps at both poles, and there were large-
scale continental glaciations up until at least 270 million years ago, and perhaps even later.4 But from then until the end of the
Permian, the planet rapidly warmed, the ice caps disappeared, and the deep ocean bottoms filled with great volumes of warm,
virtually oxygen-free seawater. The trigger for disaster was a short-term but massive infusion of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the end of the Permian from the spectacular lava
outpourings over an appreciable portion of what would become northern Asia. The lava, now ancient but still in place, is called the
Siberian Traps, the latter term coming from the Scandinavian for lava flows. The great volcanic event was but the start of things,
and led to changes in oceanography. The ultimate kill mechanism seems to have been a lethal
combination of rising temperature, diminishing oxygen, and influx into water and air of the highly poisonous
compound hydrogen sulfide. The cruel irony is that this latter poison was itself produced by life, not by the volcanoes. The
bottom line is that life produced the ultimate killer in this and surely other ancient mass EXTinctions. This finding was one that
spurred me to propose the Medea Hypothesis, and a book of the same name.5 Hydrogen sulfide poisoning might indeed be the
worst biological effect of global warming. There is no reason that such an event cannot happen again, given short-term global
warming. And because of the way the sun ages, it may be that such events will be ever easier to start than
during the deep past. How does the sun get involved in such nasty business as mass EXTinction? Unlike a campfire that burns down
to embers, any star gets ever hotter when it is on the main sequence, which is simply a term used to described the normal aging of
a starsomething like the progression we all go through as we age. But new work by Jeff Kiehl of the University of Colorado shows
that because the sun keeps getting brighter, amounts of CO2 that in the past would not have triggered the process result
in stagnant oceans filled with H2S-producing microbes. His novel approach was to estimate the global temperature rise to be
expected from carbon dioxide levels added to the energy hitting the earth from the sun. Too often we refer to the greenhouse effect
as simply a product of the gases. But it is sunlight that actually produces the heat, and that amount of energy hitting the earth keeps
increasing. He then compared those to past times of mass EXTinctions. The surprise is that a CO2 level of 1,000 ppm wouldwith
our current solar radiationmake our world the second hottest in Earth historywhen the five hottest were each associated with
mass EXTinction. In the deep history of our planet, there have been at least five short intervals in which the majority of living species
suddenly went EXTinct. Biologists are used to thinking about how environmental pressures slowly choose the organisms most fit for
survival through natural selection, shaping life on Earth like an artist sculpting clay. However, mass EXTinctions are drastic examples
of natural selection at its most ruthless, killing vast numbers of species at one time in a way hardly typical of evolution. In the 1980s,
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, and his son Walter Alvarez, first hypothesized that the impact of comets or asteroids
caused the mass EXTinctions of the past.6 Most scientists slowly come to accept this theory of EXTinction, further supported by the
discovery of a great scar in the earthan impact crateroff the coast of Mexico that dates to around the time the dinosaurs went
EXTinct. An asteroid probably did kill off the dinosaurs, but the causes of the remaining four mass EXTinctions are still obscured
beneath the accumulated effects of hundreds of millions of years, and no one has found any credible evidence of impact craters.
Rather than comets and asteroids, it now appears that short-term global warming was the culprit for the four other
mass EXTinctions. I detailed the workings of these EXTinctions first in a 1996 Discover magazine article,7 then in an October
2006 Scientific American article, and finally in my 2007 book, Under a Green Sky.8 In each I considered whether such events could
happen again. In my mind, such EXTinctions constitute the worst that could happen to life and the earth as a result of short-term
global warming. But before we get to that, let us look at the workings of these past events. The evidence at hand links the mass
EXTinctions with a changeover in the ocean from oxygenated to anoxic bottom waters. The source of this was a change in where
bottom waters are formed. It appears that in such events, the source of our earths deep water shifted from the high latitudes to
lower latitudes, and the kind of water making it to the ocean bottoms was different as well: it changed from cold, oxygenated water
to warm water containing less oxygen. The result was the EXTinction of deep-water organisms. Thus a greenhouse EXTinction is a
product of a changeover of the conveyor-belt current systems found on Earth any time there is a marked difference in temperatures
between the tropics and the polar regions. Let us summarize the steps that make greenhouse EXTinction happen. First, the world
warms over short intervals due to a sudden increase in carbon dioxide and methane, caused initially by the formation of vast
volcanic provinces called flood basalts. The warmer world affects the ocean circulation systems and
disrupts the position of the conveyor currents. Bottom waters begin to have warm, low-oxygen water
dumped into them. The warming continues, and the decrease of equator-to-pole temperature differences brings ocean
winds and surface currents to a near standstill. The mixing of oxygenated surface waters with the deeper and volumetrically
increasing low-oxygen bottom waters lessens, causing ever-shallower water to change from oxygenated to anoxic. Finally, the
bottom water exists in depths where light can penetrate, and the combination of low oxygen and light allows
green sulfur bacteria to expand in numbers, filling the low-oxygen shallows. The bacteria produce toxic
amounts of H2S, with the flux of this gas into the atmosphere occurring at as much as 2,000 times todays rates. The gas
rises into the high atmosphere, where it breaks down the ozone layer. The subsequent increase
in ultraviolet radiation from the sun kills much of the photosynthetic green plant phytoplankton. On its way up into the sky,
the hydrogen sulfide also kills some plant and animal life, and the combination of high heat and hydrogen sulfide
creates a mass EXTinction on land.9 Could this happen again? No, says one of the experts who write the
RealClimate.org Web site, Gavin Schmidt, who, it turns out, works under Jim Hansen at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center near
Washington, DC. I disagreed and challenged him to an online debate. He refused, saying that the environmental situation is going to
be bad enough without resorting to creating a scenario for mass EXTinction. But special pleading has no place in science. Could it be
that global warming could lead to the EXTinction of humanity? That prospect cannot be discounted. To pursue this question, let us
look at what might be the most crucial of all systems maintaining habitability on Planet Earth: the thermohaline current systems,
sometimes called the conveyor currents. It is both presumed and observed that current systems that run like a conveyor belt (it runs
horizontally until ducking down, reversing direction, and returning up to its original starting point) are among the most important of
the many ways that the earth redistributes heat from the sun. Such current systems have been present on Earth whenever there has
been ice at the poles, and perhaps when there is no ice at all. In the past, short-term global warming caused perturbations to several
of the conveyor current systems. Will the melting of Greenland and Antarctica cause such perturbations in the near, warmed future?
Could these changes even be happening now? And if so, what might the consequences be? Today the most important of these
currents appears to be the one that moves warm water north and east from the warm Gulf Stream of eastern North America. As
that current moves into higher latitudes, its water cools and finally sinks. This cold, highly oxygenated water is a crucial part of
maintaining a mix among the oceans gaseous elements, rather than allowing them to become stratified, with oxygenated tops and
oxygen-free bottoms, like todays Black Sea, or even totally anoxic from bottom to top. If the Gulf Stream-related current were to
change the position where the water sinks, so that less-oxygenated warm water sinks from the surface or so that no water sinks at
all, which would be the cessation of the current system, Europe might be immediately cooled, even in a globally warmed world, at
least for a while. The result would certainly be a great change in the weather, which would certainly affect agriculture, and probably
not for the better. In 2005, for the first time, a research group reported a slowing of the North Atlantic conveyor current, probably
due to massive amounts of freshwater already entering the sea in northern areas due to the rapid melting of the northern ice cap.11
As this melt increases in volume, the current will be massively affected. Freshwater is of lower density than
seawater, and it will float along the top of the ocean, effectively stopping the conveyor action of the current itself.
Just how sensitive is the conveyor current to the sort of change that could lead to a major disturbance in the worlds climatethe
kind of dramatic global change that in the past caused mass EXTinction? In other words, what would it take to cause a short-term
but radical change in the conveyor current? Some climatologists regard the Atlantic current as robust; they believe that only massive
changes in oceanography would be required to perturb it. But a larger number of scientists, including Richard B. Alley, in his now
classic and important 2002 book The Two-Mile Time Machine, regard the Atlantic conveyor current system as very finely balanced
and hence very susceptible to change .12 The easiest way to activate this change, according to sophisticated computer models, is to
pump freshwater into the northern part of the system, and that is just what is happening today. The truly staggering rate at which
Arctic ice is meltinga phenomenon not even noticed before about 2003is introducing massive volumes of freshwater into the
most dangerous point for the integrity of the conveyor current. And that input of freshwater is really just the tip of the melting
iceberg. However, another way to change the system is by rapid global temperature rise, of sufficient magnitude to significantly
reduce the temperature difference between poles and equator. The consequence of perturbation to this system is that the deep,
cold, and oxygenated bottom water from high-latitude sinking will change to deep, warm, anoxic water that came from mid-latitude
sinking. With that change a relatively cool world gives way to worldwide tropics. But could this happen again and if so, how soon?
These questions stimulated an interesting NASA meeting in 2009. In January 2009 I received an unexpected telephone message from
Dr. Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), summoning me to a spring meeting of the NASA Ames Research
Center in Sunnyvale, California, to join a discussion on life and planetary change. It turned out that the director of Ames, former
astronaut Pete Worden, had instigated the meeting to discuss the implications of short-term climate change on global biodiversity,
past and present. Greenhouse EXTinction, in other words. Thus a small group composed of scientists who have each worked on
either past mass EXTinctions or on the consequences of ancient climate change convened in welcome California warmth. We were
all glad to meet with NASA, because it had been frustrating to see how little traction this concept had gotten with the public, other
scientists, and the national agencies that fund scientific research. The other scientists attending were fellow paleontologist Doug
Erwin of the Smithsonian; geochemists Lee Kump of Penn State and Ariel Anbar of Arizona State; biologist Jon Harrison, also of
Arizona State; biochemist Roger Summons of MIT; and climate modeler Jeffrey Kiehl of Colorado. In making our presentation to a
small cadre of NASA scientists and administrators, Summons, Erwin, and I conveyed data and information supporting the hypothesis
that more than one of the past mass EXTinctions might have been caused by short-term global warming, with the devastating
Permian mass EXTinction especially featured. NEXT, several scientists reported about the prospect of future greenhouse EXTinctions.
Lee Kump of Penn State spoke first, and that was highly appropriate, for in 2005 he and colleagues first published the evidence
suggesting that H2S played a major role in mass EXTinction. Kump showed the results of modeling of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
that investigated whether the gigantic thermohaline conveyor currents (integral to keeping the deep ocean oxygenated) could soon
be affected by polar warming and the infusion of freshwater. He also added a new and important variable: the effect of enhanced
nutrients to the deep ocean at the same time as global warming. He included this factor because the mechanism that he proposed
for the Permian EXTinction, while triggered by global warming, had as its real kill mechanism the formation of vast quantities of
hydrogen sulfide dissolved in the oceans (and at high enough concentrations, leaking into the atmosphere, literally bubbling out of
the sea). For H2S to be produced by microbes from a group that used sulfur, not oxygen, for respiration, and to get large enough
quantities of H2S to kill things, there would have to be a lot of nutrients down there. To my surprise, his findings indicated that both
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could see the start of oceanic slowdown not millennia hence, but early in the nEXT century. The only
factor in his scenario that Kump failed to take into account was rising sea level. It is this mechanism, perhaps more than any other,
that would put the necessary nutrients onto the bottom of the sea, for as the many rivers and river mouths drowned, vast
quantities of organic-rich silt and mud would be carried out to sea, where it would serve as fertilizer, rich in
phosphates and nitrates that could stimulate the growth of the H2S-producing microbes, akin to fertilizing a garden bed
filled with plants producing deadly poison. Jeffrey Kiehl, who was the days final presenter, also used models to look
into the near future. He too saw signs that changing oceans are heading toward low oxygen and that warmed ocean bottoms could
begin in the current century if current global warming persists. Yet in all of the models he neglected the topic of this book: the
effects that rising sea level will have on global temperatures. Water absorbs heat from the sun and generally reflects back into space
less energy than land surfaces do. Thus, all else being equal, the larger the ocean area, the greater the warming through reduced
albedo (planetary reflectivity). It is a vicious circle, a positive feedback. Snow and ice melt, reducing albedo and raising sea level. As
the sea rises, it absorbs ever more heat, causing more ice to melt at the poles, again raising sea level, and on and on. The result of
this Ames meeting was a report that NASA said was headed to the desk of President Barack Obamas science adviser. Whether it got
there we never found out. But what we do know is that NASA has seemingly awakened to the vital connection between ancient
climates and impending climate change. Although a number of scientists have tried to communicate this argument to the public, at
the end of the first decade of the new millennium, few in the nations electronic media and print and newspapers allowed us to
make our case. They did not disbelieve us; they just responded that the past scenarios were too horrifying for us to contemplate that
they could happen again, and soon. Let us hope that a new generation will quickly decide to open their ears and listen.

Laundry List
Multiple scenarios for extinction
Brandenburg, physicist, and Paxson, science writer, 99 [John Brandenburg, plasma physicist,
worked in defense, energy, and space research, visiting Prof. Researcher @ Florida Space Institute, and part of the Clementine
Mission to the Moon which discovered water at the Moon's poles; Monica Paxson, Science and environment writer, Dead Mars,
Dying Earth, pgs. 232-233]

The ozone hole expands, driven by a monstrous synergy with global warming that puts more catalytic ice
crystals into the stratosphere, but this affects the far north and south and not the major nations heartlands. The seas
rise, the tropics roast but the media networks no longer cover it. The Amazon rainforest becomes the
Amazon desert. Oxygen levels fall, but profits rise for those who can provide it in bottles. An equatorial high-
pressure zone forms, forcing drought in central Africa and Brazil, the Nile dries up and the
monsoons fail. Then inevitably, at some unlucky point in time, a major unexpected event occursa
major volcanic eruption, a sudden and dramatic shift in ocean circulation or a large asteroid impact
(those who think freakish accidents do not occur have paid little attention to life or Mars), or a nuclear war that starts between
Pakistan and India and escalates to involve China and Russia . . . Suddenly the gradual climb in global temperatures goes on a mad
excursion as the oceans warm and release large amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide from their lower depths into the atmosphere.
Oxygen levels go down precipitously as oxygen replaces lost oceanic carbon dioxide. Asthma
cases double and then double again. Now a third of the world fears breathing. As the oceans dump carbon dioxide,
the greenhouse effect increases, which further warms the oceans, causing them to dump even more carbon. Because of the
heat, plants die and burn in enormous fires, which release more carbon dioxide, and the
oceans evaporate, adding more water vapor to the greenhouse. Soon, we are in what is termed a
runaway greenhouse effect, as happened to Venus eons ago. The last two surviving scientists inevitably argue, one telling
the other, See! I told you the missing sink was in the ocean! Earth, as we know it, dies. After this Venusian excursion in
temperatures, the oxygen disappears into the soil, the oceans evaporate and are lost and the dead
Earth loses its ozone layer completely. Earth is too far from the Sun for it to be the second Venus for long. Its
atmosphere is slowly lostas is its waterbecause of ultraviolet bombardment breaking up
all the molecules apart from carbon dioxide. As the atmosphere becomes thin, the Earth becomes colder. For a
short while temperatures are nearly normal, but the ultraviolet sears any life that tries to make a comeback.
The carbon dioxide thins out to form a thin veneer with a few wispy clouds and dust devils. Earth becomes the second
Marsred, desolate, with perhaps a few hardy microbes surviving.
Ocean Acidification
Emissions causes ocean acidification extinction.
Romm 12 physicist and climate expert, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Senior Fellow at
the Center for American Progress (Joseph J., Science: Ocean Acidifying so fast that it threatens humanitys ability to feed itself,
3/2/12; < http://earthlawcenter.org/news/headline/science-ocean-acidifying-so-fast-it-threatens-humanitys-ability-to-feed-
itself/>)//Beddow
The worlds oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they
did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon
sent global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic
record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period. What were doing today really stands out, said lead author
Brbel Hnisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia Universitys Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. We know that life during past
ocean acidification events was not wiped outnew species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon
emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care aboutcoral reefs,
oysters, salmon. James Zachos, a paleoceanographer at University of California, Santa Cruz, with a core of sediment from
some 56 million years ago, when the oceans underwent acidification that could be an analog to ocean changes today. Thats the
news release from a major 21-author Science paper, The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification (subs. reqd). We knew from a
2010 Nature Geoscience study that the oceans are now acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million
years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. But this study looked back over 300 million and
found that the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place has put marine life at
risk in a frighteningly unique way: the current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands
out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes
potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 My of Earth history, raising the possibility
that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change. That is to say, its not just that
acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown by end of century as a 2010 Geological Society study put it. We are also
warming the ocean and decreasing dissolved oxygen concentration. That is a recipe for mass extinction. A 2009
Nature Geoscience study found that ocean dead zones devoid of fish and seafood are poised
to expand and remain for thousands of years. And remember, we just learned from a 2012 new Nature Climate
Change study that carbon dioxide is driving fish crazy and threatening their survival. Heres more on the new study: The oceans act
like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air; the gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time
is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions
that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building. That is what is happening now. In a review of hundreds of
paleoceanographic studies, a team of researchers from five countries found evidence for only one period in the last 300 million years
when the oceans changed even remotely as fast as today: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, some 56 million years
ago. In the early 1990s, scientists extracting sediments from the seafloor off Antarctica found a layer of mud from this period
wedged between thick deposits of white plankton fossils. In a span of about 5,000 years, they estimated, a mysterious surge of
carbon doubled atmospheric concentrations, pushed average global temperatures up by about 6 degrees C, and dramatically
changed the ecological landscape. The result: carbonate plankton shells littering the seafloor dissolved, leaving the brown layer of
mud. As many as half of all species of benthic foraminifers, a group of single-celled organisms that live at the ocean bottom, went
extinct, suggesting that organisms higher in the food chain may have also disappeared, said study co-author Ellen Thomas, a
paleoceanographer at Yale University who was on that pivotal Antarctic cruise. Its really unusual that you lose more than 5 to 10
percent of species over less than 20,000 years, she said. Its usually on the order of a few percent over a million years. During this
time, scientists estimate, ocean pHa measure of aciditymay have fallen as much as 0.45 units. (As pH falls, acidity rises.) In the
last hundred years, atmospheric CO2 has risen about 30 percent, to 393 parts per million, and ocean pH has fallen by 0.1 unit, to
8.1an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, says Hnisch. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change predicts that pH may fall another 0.3 units by the end of the century,to 7.8, raising the possibility that we may soon see
ocean changes similar to those observed during the PETM. More catastrophic events have shaken earth before,
but perhaps not as quickly. The study finds two other times of potential ocean acidification: the
extinctions triggered by massive volcanism at the end of the Permian and Triassic eras, about
252 million and 201 million years ago respectively. But the authors caution that the timing and chemical changes
of these events is less certain. Because most ocean sediments older than 180 million years have been recycled back into the deep
earth, scientists have fewer records to work with. During the end of the Permian, about 252 million years ago, massive volcanic
eruptions in present-day Russia led to a rise in atmospheric carbon, and the extinction of 96 percent of marine life. Scientists have
found evidence for ocean dead zones and the survival of organisms able to withstand carbonate-poor seawater and high blood-
carbon levels, but so far they have been unable to reconstruct changes in ocean pH or carbonate. At the end of the Triassic, about
201 million years ago, a second burst of mass volcanism doubled atmospheric carbon. Coral reefs collapsed and many sea creatures
vanished. Noting that tropical species fared the worst, some scientists question if global warming rather than ocean acidification was
the main killer at this time. The effects of ocean acidification today are overshadowed for now by other problems, ranging from
sewage pollution and hotter summer temperatures that threaten corals with disease and bleaching. However, scientists trying to
isolate the effects of acidic water in the lab have shown that lower pH levels can harm a range of marine life, from reef and shell-
building organisms to the tiny snails favored by salmon. In a recent study, scientists from Stony Brook University found that the
larvae of bay scallops and hard clams grow best at pre-industrial pH levels, while their shells corrode at the levels projected for 2100.
Off the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the death of oyster larvae has recently been linked to the upwelling of acidic water there. In parts of
the ocean acidified by underwater volcanoes venting carbon dioxide, scientists have seen alarming signs of what the oceans could be
like by 2100. In a 2011 study of coral reefs off Papua New Guinea, scientists writing in the journal Nature Climate Change found that
when pH dropped to 7.8, reef diversity declined by as much as 40 percent. Other studies have found that clownfish larvae raised in
the lab lose their ability to sniff out predators and find their way home when pH drops below 7.8. Its not a problem that can be
quickly reversed, said Christopher Langdon, a biological oceanographer at the University of Miami who co-authored the study on
Papua New Guinea reefs. Once a species goes extinct its gone forever. Were playing a very dangerous
game.


Ocean acidification destroys marine biodiversity
Hendriks et. Al 10 (I.E. Hendriks Department of Global Change Research. IMEDEA, January 2010 "Vulnerability of marine
biodiversity to ocean acidification: A meta-analysis
http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science/article/pii/S027277140900537X
The ocean has captured between 28 and 34% of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emitted to
the atmosphere between 1980 and 1994 (Millero, 2007 and Sabine et al., 2004). The ensuing increase in ocean CO2
concentration (Millero, 2007 and Sabine et al., 2004) has lead to a reduction of about 0.1 pH units in ocean
surface waters compared to pre-industrial times (Caldeira and Wickett, 2003) and a further decline by 0.30.5 pH
units is expected by 2100 (Caldeira and Wickett, 2005). Ocean acidification has been proposed to pose a
major threat for marine organisms, particularly shell-forming and calcifying organisms (Kleypas et
al., 1999 and Riebesell et al., 2000). Warnings that ocean acidification is a major threat to marine biodiversity (Kleypas et al., 1999,
Orr et al., 2005, Raven, 2005, Sponberg, 2007 and Zondervan et al., 2001) are largely based on the analysis of predicted changes in
ocean chemical fields (Caldeira and Wickett, 2005, IPCC, 2007 and Raven, 2005), with limited experimental support (Doney et al.,
2009). These inferences have prompted substantial investments in research funds to support
major increases in research efforts, which are providing evidence that the responses of
organisms to ocean acidification may be more complex than previously thought (Fabry, 2008 and
Iglesias-Rodriguez et al., 2008). There is a need to test the generality and magnitude of the predicted negative impact of ocean
acidification on marine biota. Here we evaluate the vulnerability of marine biota to ocean acidification through a meta-analysis of
available experimental assessments of the impacts of acidification on a range of functions across marine organisms.


Loss of biodiversity causes extinction
Cardinale 12 (Bradley J. Cardinale Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2002 Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity
http://www.nature.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/nature/journal/v486/n7401/pdf/nature11148.pdf)
The significance of biodiversity for human wellbeing was recognized 20 years ago with the formation of
the Convention on Biological Diversityan intergovernmental agreement among 193 countries to support the conservation of
biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits. Despite this agreement,
evidence gathered in 2010 indicated that biodiversity loss at the global scale was continuing, often at increasing rates98. This
observation stimulated a set of new targets for 2020 (the Aichi targets) and, in parallel, governments have
been negotiating the establishment of a new assessment body, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The IPBES will be charged with conducting regional, global and thematic assessments of biodiversity
and ecosystem services, and will depend on the international scientific community to assess trends and evaluate risks associated
with alternative patterns of development and changes in land use99 . Significant gaps in both the science and policy need
attention if the Aichi targets are to be met, and if future ecosystems are to provide the range of services required to support more
people sustainably99. We have reported the scientific consensus that has emerged over 20 years of
biodiversity research, to help orient the next generation of research on the links between
biodiversity and the benefits ecosystems provide to humanity. One of the greatest challenges now is to
use what we have learned to develop predictive models that are founded on empirically quantified ecological mechanisms; that
forecast changes in ecosystem services at scales that are policy-relevant; and that link to social, economic and political systems.
Without an understanding of the fundamental ecological processes that link biodiversity,
ecosystem functions and services, attempts to forecast the societal consequences of diversity
loss, and to meet policy objectives, are likely to fail100. But with that fundamental
understanding in hand, we may yet bring the modern era of biodiversity loss to a safe end for
humanity


Ocean acidification on the brink now
Doney 09 Scott C. Doney Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean
Acidication: The Other CO2 Problem
http://www.annualreviews.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163834)
Over the past 250 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels increased by nearly 40%,
from preindustrial levels of approximately 280 ppmv (parts per million volume) to nearly 384 ppmv
in 2007 (Solomon et al. 2007). This rate of increase, driven by human fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, is at least an
order of magnitude faster than has occurred for millions of years (Doney & Schimel 2007), and the current concentration is higher
than experienced on Earth for at least the past 800,000 years (Luthi et al. 2008). Rising atmospheric CO 2 is
tempered by oceanic uptake, which accounts for nearly a third of anthropogenic carbon
added to the atmosphere (Sabine & Feely 2007, Sabine et al. 2004), and without which atmospheric CO2 would be
approximately 450 ppmv today, a level of CO2 that would have led to even greater climate change than witnessed today. Ocean
CO2 uptake, however, is not benign; it causes pH reductions and alterations in fundamental chemical balances that together are
commonly referred to as ocean acidication. Because climate change and ocean acidication are both
caused by increasing atmospheric CO2, acidication is commonly referred to as the other
CO2 problem (Henderson 2006, Turley 2005). Ocean acidication is a predictable consequence of rising atmospheric CO2
and does not suffer from uncertainties associated with climate change forecasts. Absorption of anthropogenic CO2,
reduced pH, and lower calcium carbonate (CaCO3) saturation in surface waters, where the
bulk of oceanic production occurs, are well veried from models, hydrographic surveys, and
time series data (Caldeira & Wickett 2003, 2005; Feely et al. 2004, 2008; Orr et al. 2005; Solomon et al. 2007). At the Hawaii
Ocean Time-Series (HOT) station ALOHA the growth rates of surface water pCO2 and atmospheric CO2 agree well (Takahashi et al.
2006) (Figure 1), indicating uptake of anthropogenic CO2 as the major cause for long-term increases in dissolved inorganic carbon
(DIC) and decreases in CaCO3 saturation state. Correspondingly, since the 1980s average pH measurements at HOT, the Bermuda
Atlantic Time-Series Study, and European Station for TimeSeries in the Ocean in the eastern Atlantic have decreased approximately
0.02 units per decade (Solomon et al. 2007). Since preindustrial times, the average ocean surface water pH has fallen by
approximately 0.1 units, from approximately 8.21 to 8.10 (Royal Society 2005), and is expected to decrease a further 0.30.4 pH
units (Orr et al. 2005) if atmospheric CO2 concentrations reach 800 ppmv [the projected end-of-century concentration according to
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) business-as-usual emission scenario]. Fossil fuel combustion
and agriculture also produce increased atmospheric inputs of dissociation products of strong
acids (HNO3 and H2 SO4) and bases (NH3) to the coastal and open ocean. These inputs are
particularly important close to major source regions, primarily in the northern hemisphere,
and cause decreases in surface seawater alkalinity, pH, and DIC (Doney et al. 2007). On a global scale,
these anthropogenic inputs (0.8 Tmol/yr reactive sulfur and 2.7 Tmol/yr reactive nitrogen)
contribute only a small fraction of the acidication caused by anthropogenic CO2, but they
are more concentrated in coastal waters where the ecosystem responses to ocean
acidication could be more serious for humankind.


Ocean acidification causes biodiversity loss
Bienkowski 13 (Brian Bienkowski is a Senior editor, staff writer at Environmental Health News U.S. Effort on Ocean
Acidification Needs Focus on Human Impacts
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-effort-on-ocean-acidification-needs-focus-on-human-impacts)
A federal plan to tackle ocean acidification must focus more on how the changes will affect
people and the economy, according to a review of the effort by a panel of the National
Research Council. "Social issues clearly can't drive everything but when it's possible they should," said George Somero, chair
of the committee that wrote the report and associate director at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. "If you're setting up a
monitoring station, it should be where there's a shellfish industry, for example." Acidification is one of the larger
problems associated with greenhouse gas emissions, as oceans serve as a giant sponge for
carbon dioxide. When carbon dioxide is dissolved in seawater, water chemistry changes and
acidity increases. More acidic seawater can hurt ocean creatures, especially corals and
shellfish, because it prevents them from properly developing their skeletons and shells.
Shrinking coral reefs could dent eco-tourism revenue in some coastal areas. It also could
trigger a decline in fish populations dependent on those reefs. Decreasing shellfish
populations would harm the entire ocean food chain, researchers say, particularly affecting people who get
their protein or paycheck from the sea. Globally, fish represent about 6 percent of the protein people eat.
The acidification blueprint was drafted by nine federal agencies in March 2012. It establishes
guidelines for federal research, monitoring and mitigation of ocean acidification. In reviewing the
plan, the research council, which advises the government on science policy, recommended that federal research and action be
focused on issues with human and economic consequences.


Co2 causes ocean acidification killing all ocean species
McKie 11 (Robin McKie is science and technology editor for the Observer Ocean acidification
is latest manifestation of global warming, 28 May 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/global-warming-threat-to-oceans)

That discovery is highly revealing, and worrying, because Vulcano's afflictions are being
repeated today on a global scale, in every ocean on the planet not from volcanic sources but
from the industrial plants, power stations, cars and planes that are pumping out growing
amounts of carbon dioxide and which are making our seas increasingly acidic. Millions of
marine species are now threatened with extinction; fisheries face eradication; while reefs that
protect coastal areas are starting to erode. Ocean acidification is now one of the most
worrying threats to the planet, say marine biologists. "Just as Vulcano is pumping carbon
dioxide into the waters around it, humanity is pouring more and more carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere," Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist at Plymouth University, told a
conference on the island last week. "Some of the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide we emit
each year lingers in the atmosphere and causes it to heat up, driving global warming. But
about 30% of that gas is absorbed by the oceans where it turns to carbonic acid. It is beginning
to kill off coral reefs and shellfish beds and threaten stocks of fish. Very little can live in water
that gets too acidic." Hence science's renewed interest in Vulcano. Its carbon dioxide springs
which bubble up like burst water mains below the shallow seabed provide researchers with a
natural laboratory for testing the global impact of ocean acidification. "These vents and the
carbonic acid they generate tell us a great deal about how carbon dioxide is going to affect the
oceans and marine life this century," said Hall-Spencer. "And we should be worried. This
problem is a train coming straight at us." Scientists estimate that oceans absorb around a
million tonnes of carbon dioxide every hour and our seas are 30% more acidic than they were
last century. This increased acidity plays havoc with levels of calcium carbonate, which forms
the shells and skeletons of many sea creatures, and also disrupts reproductive activity. Among
the warning signs recently noted have been the failures of commercial oyster and other shellfish
beds on the Pacific coasts of the US and Canada. In addition, coral reefs already bleached by
rising global temperatures have suffered calamitous disintegration in many regions. And at the
poles and high latitudes, where the impact of ocean acidification is particularly serious, tiny
shellfish called pteropods the basic foodstuff of fish, whales and seabirds in those regions
have suffered noticeable drops in numbers. In each case, ocean acidification is thought to be
involved. The problem was recently highlighted by the head of the US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, Dr Jane Lubchenco. She described ocean acidification as global
warming's "equally evil twin". It is a powerful comparison, though it is clear that of the two, the
crisis facing our seas has received far less attention. The last UN climate assessment report was
more than 400 pages long but had only two pages on ocean acidification mainly because
studies of the phenomenon are less well advanced than meteorological and atmospheric
research in general. The workshop, held last week on Vulcano, is part of the campaign to
understand the likely impact of ocean acidification. Dozens of young oceanographers, geologists
and ecologists gathered for the meeting run by the Mediterranean Sea Acidification (MedSeA)
programme. Dr Maoz Fine, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, reported work on coral reef organisms
that had been exposed to waters of different levels of acidity, temperature and light in his
laboratory. "We found that species of coral reef respond differently to rising carbon dioxide
levels," he said. "Bigger corals suffer but survive while smaller, branching varieties become less
able to fight disease and die off. That sort of thing just makes it even more difficult to predict
exactly what is going to happen to our oceans." Few scientists doubt that the impact on reefs
will be anything short of devastating, however. The Caribbean has already lost about 80% of its
coral reefs to bleaching caused by rising temperatures and by overfishing which removes species
that normally aid coral growth. Acidification threatens to do the same for the rest of the world's
coral reefs. "By the middle of the century there will probably be only a few pockets in the
North Sea and the Pacific. Millions of species of fish, shellfish and micro-organisms will be
wiped out," said Fine. Acidification has affected the oceans in the past. However, these
prehistoric events occurred at a far slower rate, said Dr Jerry Blackford of Plymouth Marine
Laboratory. "The waters of the world take around 500 years to circulate the globe," he said. "If
carbon dioxide was rising slowly, in terms of thousands of years, natural factors could then
compensate. Sediments could buffer the carbonic acid, for example." But levels of carbon
dioxide are rising much faster today. By the end of the century, surface seawater will be 150%
more acidic than it was in 1800. "There is simply not enough time for buffering to come into
effect and lessen the impact," said Blackford. "The result will be significant acid build-up in the
upper parts of the oceans which, of course, are the parts that are of greatest importance to
humans."



Ocean acidification threatens fish population causing extinction
Kroh 11 (Kiley Kroh The Great Oyster Crash and Why Ocean Acidification Is A Ticking Time
Bomb for Both Marine Life and Humanity, Sep 14, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/14/318681/the-great-oyster-crash-and-why-ocean-
acidification-is-a-ticking-time-bomb-for-both-marine-life-and-humanity/)

As Scigliano explains, the oceans are the worlds great carbon sink, holding about 50 times as
much of the element as the air. As carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and other
industrial processes rise, so too does the level of acidity in the oceans. Once it reaches a certain
threshold, ocean acidification becomes lethal to many species, including clams and oysters,
which become unable to build the shells or skeletons they need to survive. The rise in acidity
and subsequent oyster crash took a significant toll on coastal communities from 2005 to 2009,
West Coast production dropped from 93 million pounds to 73 million pounds, representing $11
million in lost sales. This case is among the earliest examples of ocean acidification imposing a
direct effect on the economy. Unfortunately, we can safely say it is far from the last. By
installing new technology to carefully monitor ocean temperatures and chemistry, some west
coast hatcheries were able to rebuild, but their bounty might be short-lived. While temporary
mitigation measures have been successful, they are just that temporary. Scientists from
Mexico, Canada, and the United States found that upwellings of acidic water like those that
wiped out the Pacific hatcheries operate on a delay of several decades the water rising from
the deep ocean today holds CO2 absorbed approximately 30 to 50 years ago. In the last 50
years, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have risen 25 percent a terrifying presage for the
health of the worlds oceans. Burke Hales, one of the scientists involved in the research,
explains: Weve mailed a package to ourselves and its hard to call off delivery. Benoit
Eudeline, chief hatchery scientist for Taylor Shellfish Farms, the largest US producer of farmed
shellfish, likened the current situation to sitting on a ticking time bomb. The threat of ocean
acidification spreads far beyond the oyster industry and carries potentially catastrophic
implications for the entire food chain. Basically any fish that might find its way onto your dinner
plate relies on krill, plankton, snails or other shelled creatures that stand to be hit earliest and
hardest by acidification. The chart below, for instance, shows that about half the annual catch
by value in the U.S. comes from mollusks and crustaceans and another 24 percent are animals
that directly feed upon these calcifiers representing billions of dollars and millions of jobs at
stake. (See chart above.) The damaging effects of ocean acidification will likely be felt even
more acutely beyond American shores. A recent study found that mollusk fisheries will decline
most in poor countries that are already struggling with protein deficiencies. In Madagascar, one
of the countries the study predicted would be hit hardest, fishing provides 7 percent of the GDP
and generates nearly half a million jobs and local officials confirm the effects of both climate
change and ocean acidification are already being felt. Though advancements in science and
fisheries management can help provisionally assuage the blow of ocean acidification,
ultimately, only significant measures to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere will
prevent the oceans from becoming more acidic and threatening more species. The
groundbreaking 2005 study on ocean acidification conducted by The Royal Society
recommended a major internationally coordinated effort to stem the tide of acidification,
unequivocally stating, action needs to be taken now to reduce global emis Americans consume
approximately 700 million farmed oysters per year. Despite our love for these briny bivalves,
shellfish and the coastal communities that depend on them face serious threats. In a recent
piece, Eric Scigliano examines The Great Oyster Crash of 2007, in which oyster seed (larvae)
off the coast of Oregon and Washington began dying by the millions, seemingly without cause.
After taking aggressive measures to eliminate bacteria in the tanks, and failing to halt their
losses, the owners began to suspect the problem was a more fundamental change in the
makeup of the oceans. With the help of local scientists, they found that their losses were
directly linked to a far more ominous phenomenon: ocean acidification. As Scigliano explains,
the oceans are the worlds great carbon sink, holding about 50 times as much of the element as
the air. As carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes rise, so too
does the level of acidity in the oceans. Once it reaches a certain threshold, ocean acidification
becomes lethal to many species, including clams and oysters, which become unable to build the
shells or skeletons they need to survive. The rise in acidity and subsequent oyster crash took a
significant toll on coastal communities from 2005 to 2009, West Coast production dropped
from 93 million pounds to 73 million pounds, representing $11 million in lost sales. This case is
among the earliest examples of ocean acidification imposing a direct effect on the economy.
Unfortunately, we can safely say it is far from the last. By installing new technology to carefully
monitor ocean temperatures and chemistry, some west coast hatcheries were able to rebuild,
but their bounty might be short-lived. While temporary mitigation measures have been
successful, they are just that temporary. Scientists from Mexico, Canada, and the United
States found that upwellings of acidic water like those that wiped out the Pacific hatcheries
operate on a delay of several decades the water rising from the deep ocean today holds CO2
absorbed approximately 30 to 50 years ago. In the last 50 years, the levels of CO2 in the
atmosphere have risen 25 percent a terrifying presage for the health of the worlds oceans.
Burke Hales, one of the scientists involved in the research, explains: Weve mailed a package to
ourselves and its hard to call off delivery. Benoit Eudeline, chief hatchery scientist for Taylor
Shellfish Farms, the largest US producer of farmed shellfish, likened the current situation to
sitting on a ticking time bomb. The threat of ocean acidification spreads far beyond the
oyster industry and carries potentially catastrophic implications for the entire food chain.
Basically any fish that might find its way onto your dinner plate relies on krill, plankton, snails or
other shelled creatures that stand to be hit earliest and hardest by acidification. The chart
below, for instance, shows that about half the annual catch by value in the U.S. comes from
mollusks and crustaceans and another 24 percent are animals that directly feed upon these
calcifiers representing billions of dollars and millions of jobs at stake. (See chart above.) The
damaging effects of ocean acidification will likely be felt even more acutely beyond American
shores. A recent study found that mollusk fisheries will decline most in poor countries that are
already struggling with protein deficiencies. In Madagascar, one of the countries the study
predicted would be hit hardest, fishing provides 7 percent of the GDP and generates nearly half
a million jobs and local officials confirm the effects of both climate change and ocean
acidification are already being felt. Though advancements in science and fisheries
management can help provisionally assuage the blow of ocean acidification, ultimately, only
significant measures to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere will prevent the oceans
from becoming more acidic and threatening more species. The groundbreaking 2005 study on
ocean acidification conducted by The Royal Society recommended a major internationally
coordinated effort to stem the tide of acidification, unequivocally stating, action needs to be
taken now to reduce global emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere to avoid the risk of
irreversible damage to the oceans. Six years later, were still waiting. sions of CO2 to the
atmosphere to avoid the risk of irreversible damage to the oceans. Six years later, were still
waiting.


Loss of biodiversity causes extinction
Reed 12 (David H. Reed Department of Biology, University of Louisville Impact of Climate
Change
on Biodiversity) 2012
http://link.springer.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-7991-
9_15.pdf

In the fossil record, an individual vertebrate (amphibian, bird, sh, mammal, or reptile)
species lasts on average at least 1 million years before it becomes extinct. Thus, in an
average year, no more than one out of one million species should go extinct. The current
observed extinction rate since 1,600, for vertebrates, is 2.6 per 10,000 species per year. That
is at least 260 times the background rate of extinction. At this rate, it would take less than
15,000 years to equal the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs over several million years.
Further, because we know that the primary cause of modern extinctions is the loss,
degradation, and fragmentation of habitat, and because we know the response to habitat loss is
not linear, we expect that background rate to continue to increase and probably become an
order of magnitude greater than it is currently [81, 82]. The reason for this increased and
increasing rate of extinction is not difcult to fathom. Humans have been strongly implicated
in global extinctions for tens of thousands of years [83, 84], but the current mass extinction
is due to the fact that in the last 50 years we have used more of Earths resources than we
have for the entire history of humanity before that point. We are losing topsoil at least ten
times faster than it can be replaced [52], about 10% of the Earths agricultural land has become
unt for agriculture in the past 40 years while the population continues to expand, 80% of the
worlds sh stocks for which assessment information is available are reported as fully exploited
or overexploited, we are using more than 20% of the worlds renewable fresh water just for
irrigation [85], and about 40% of the worlds rainforests have been lost in the past 50 years.
The human population has increased from 3.0 to 6.9 billion during those same 50 years and
we are expecting another two billion over the next 40 years. However, the current rate of
extinction might pale compared to what anthropogenic climate change threatens [82, 83]. If
we do not do something about climate change then all the money and the effort that has
gone into saving species from extinction will likely be lost. This is particularly true because
the current threat from habitat destruction and fragmentation interacts with climate change
in a nonlinear way so that the negative impacts are greater than expected by looking at the
threats independentdly.


Ocean Bio-D
CO2 destroys ocean biodiversity adaptation and resiliency dont check
Rau, UC Santa Cruz Institute of Marine Sciences, et al. 12 [Greg H. Rau, UC Santa Cruz Institute
of Marine Sciences, Elizabeth L. McLeod, and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, 8/19/12, Nature, The need for new ocean conservation
strategies in a high-carbon dioxide world, pgs. 1-2,
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs/Hurricanes/Greg%20Rau%20ocean%20carbon.pdf, accessed 1/17/13, JTF]

The increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2 is thermally and chemically impacting the
ocean and its ecosystems. If current trends continue, mean atmospheric CO2 is expected to
exceed 500 ppm by 2050 a more than 80% increase above preindustrial (pre-1750) levels 1. This
rate of increase seems to have few, if any, parallels in the past 300 million years of Earths
history 2. By mid-century the consequences of such an increase are projected to result in a global mean warming of at least 2 C
(ref. 1) and a >60% increase in mean surface ocean acidity 3 that will have occurred over a span of just three centuries. Both the
magnitude and rapidity of these changes is likely to surpass the ability of numerous marine
species to adapt and survive 4. Impacts are being and will be felt from tropical to polar oceans 3,57, although regional
and ecosystem differences in forcings and biological responses are anticipated. Coral reef ecosystems and associated
fisheries are likely to be particularly affected by the thermal and chemical changes 816, with
trillions of dollars in economic benefit at risk globally 1719, not to mention the threats to
environmental services provided by the ocean that directly contribute to Earths habitability .
Our concern is that the specific actions to counter such impacts as identified in current policy statements will prove inadequate or
ineffective. Therefore, a much broader evaluation of marine management and mitigation options must now be seriously
considered. Policy greatly influences the actions taken by the marine research and management communities (Fig. 1), so it is critical
that policy statements accurately reflect the risks and impacts of climate change and ocean acidification, and recommend effective
actions to better understand and reduce or avoid these impacts. Numerous reports and policy documents (for example, refs 1925)
have emphasized three general recommended actions to address ocean warming and acidification: (1) stabilize or reduce
atmospheric CO2 levels; (2) increase measurement and monitoring to better understand and predict the oceans physical, chemical
and biological responses to increased CO2; and (3) preserve ecosystem resilience and adaptability by reducing non-CO2 -related
environmental threats (for example, reduction of pollution, sedimentation and over-fishing, especially through the use of marine
protected areas integrated with coastal zone management to control both marine- and land-based threats). Although we agree that
all of the preceding actions are essential and should continue, we are concerned that they may prove to be insufficient or not fully
achievable in the time frame necessary to ensure the preservation of current marine ecosystems and their services in the face of
CO2 -related threats. Given the scale and potential cost of the impacts, acting to stabilize
atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases makes clear economic and environmental
sense 2629. Yet despite growing awareness of this need and decades of effort, global anthropogenic CO2 emissions and air
concentrations continue to escalate 30,31, as have ocean temperature 32 and acidity 3. Furthermore, the emission-reduction and
mitigation actions proposed by industrialized and developing countries as part of the Copenhagen Accord are insufficient to provide
even a medium chance (5066%) of limiting mean warming to 2 C above preindustrial levels 33. Even if stricter emission-reduction
proposals and mitigation actions are agreed to and implemented, excess CO2 in the oceanatmosphere system and the associated
thermal and chemical effects will persist globally for many millennia after emissions have ceased 34. For these reasons it is unwise to
assume that we will be able to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at levels necessary to reduce or prevent ongoing damage to marine
ecosystems. The measurement, monitoring and prediction of marine chemical and biological responses to increasing CO2 (action
(2) above) are clearly required to understand, anticipate and quantify their consequences for the ocean. However, such actions
alone do not solve ensuing environmental problems unless used to inform and assess mitigation and conservation efforts (Fig. 1).
This leads to the third commonly suggested action: preservation of marine ecosystem resilience and adaptability by reducing non-
CO2 -related impacts (for example, pollution, over-fishing). There is indeed evidence that at least some marine
species or genotypes will be unaffected or even enhanced by elevated temperature and
acidity, or may be able to adapt through physiological changes or genetic selection 3537. Yet for many species,
especially corals and echinoderms, the current rate of CO2 -induced environmental changes
present fundamental challenges to their ability to adapt and survive. Marine life has prevailed
through numerous large environmental transients in the geological record, but these episodes have
resulted in significant marine species extinctions and ecosystem restructuring, with many
marine groups existing as rare members of fundamentally altered ecological assemblages 37,38.
Indeed, the current rate of atmospheric and ocean CO2 change seems to have few rivals within
the geological record where elevated extinction rates and alteration of marine ecosystems are evident during previous,
rapid and persistent warming and/or pH depression 2,3739. Marine organisms in certain locations are already
negatively impacted by these extraordinarily high rates of environmental change, and may be
unable to adapt to the projected future levels in specific areas 6,15,4042. It can be argued that
preservation of species could occur via their vertical or geographical migration/dispersal to sub-lethal thermal and chemical regimes
(should such regimes persist). This could, however, prove difficult given the potential distances involved and lack of connectivity
between such sites. For example, reef-building corals at the northern end of the Great Barrier Reef are locally adapted to sea
temperatures that are on average about 2 C warmer than those growing 1,500 km off the southern end of Great Barrier Reef 8. In
this case, to keep up with sea temperatures that are likely to increase by 2 C by the end of the century, corals (and indeed coral reef
ecosystems) would have to move southward at a rate of around 15 km per year. Although there is evidence that coral
species can migrate to higher latitudes over relatively long distances and relatively short time
frames 43,44, such events are rare and it seems highly unlikely that a complex ecosystem such
as a coral reef (with ecosystem services intact) can migrate 15 km per year. Therefore, relying on species
natural resilience, adaptability and mobility to overcome global CO2 impacts would seem risky
at best, regardless of the benefits of reducing non-CO2 anthropogenic stressors using conventional, passive conservation
practices. Once CO2-induced temperature and acidity tolerance thresholds for a given species are
crossed, there can be no quick return to tolerable conditions, barring active environmental intervention. In
the case of ocean chemistry, the time frame for return to previous conditions is measured in many thousands of years.

Ocean Laundry List
Warming acidifies the ocean and destroys ocean services that causes
extinction
Sify 10 [Sydney newspaper, cites Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at University of Queensland and Director of the Global
Change Institute, and John Bruno, University of North Carolina associate professor of Marine Science, Sify News, 6/20/10, Could
unbridled climate changes lead to human extinction?, http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridled-climate-changes-lead-to-human-
extinction-news-international-kgtrOhdaahc.html, accessed 12/24/12, JTF]

The findings of the comprehensive report: 'The impact of climate change on the world's marine
ecosystems' emerged from a synthesis of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out
by two of the world's leading marine scientists. One of the authors of the report is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg,
professor at The University of Queensland and the director of its Global Change Institute (GCI). 'We may see sudden,
unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of humans,
including the capacity of the planet to support people. This is further evidence that we are well
on the way to the next great extinction event,' says Hoegh-Guldberg. 'The findings have enormous implications for
mankind, particularly if the trend continues. The earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we
breathe and absorbs 30 per cent of human-generated carbon dioxide, is equivalent to its heart
and lungs. This study shows worrying signs of ill-health. It's as if the earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!,' he
added. 'We are entering a period in which the ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing
massive change and in some cases beginning to fail', he added. The 'fundamental and
comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the report include rapidly warming and acidifying
oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones within the ocean depths. These are
driving major changes in marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves (important
fish nurseries); fewer, smaller fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of
marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms. Study co-author John F Bruno,
associate professor in marine science at The University of North Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are
modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's oceans, in ways
'unprecedented in nearly a million years'. 'This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes to the way
marine ecosystems function,' Bruno warned, according to a GCI release.

Structural Violence
Warming outweighs structural violence
Bostrom, philosophy professor, 12 [Nick, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School,
Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University
of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, March 6, 2012, Nick Bostrom interview with Ross Andersen, a freelance writer, a
regular contributor to the technology channel at The Atlantic, We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction, The Atlantic,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/]

Some have argued that we ought to be directing our resources toward humanity's existing
problems, rather than future existential risks, because many of the latter are highly
improbable. You have responded by suggesting that existential risk mitigation may in fact be a dominant moral priority over the
alleviation of present suffering. Can you explain why? Bostrom: Well suppose you have a moral view that
counts future people as being worth as much as present people. You might say that
fundamentally it doesn't matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some future
time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it doesn't
matter where somebody is spatially---somebody isn't automatically worth less because you move them to the moon
or to Africa or something. A human life is a human life. If you have that moral point of view that
future generations matter in proportion to their population numbers, then you get this very
stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much higher utility than pretty much
anything else that you could do. There are so many people that could come into existence in
the future if humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our
descendants might colonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more
people than exist currently. Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of
realizing this enormous good will tend to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating
poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary standards.

Tsunamis
Warming causes mega tsunamis
Anitei 07 *Stefan, citing geologist and oceanographers, 5/9/07, A Huge Tsunami Hit Britain 400 Years Ago; A Mega-Tsunami
Will Do it Soon, http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Huge-Tsunami-Hit-Britain-400-Years-Ago-A-Mega-Tsunami-Will-Do-it-Soon-
54237.shtml, accessed 1/11/13, JTF]

The massive flood on January 30, 1607 went over the Bristol Channel (southwestern England),
submerging over 190 square miles (500 square km) of land, causing 2,000 victims and by that time the cause of
the disaster was a freak storm surge. Still, researchers warn that U.K. remains vulnerable to another
such disaster, even more deadly. "It is certainly something that could happen again, and today the impact
would be far worse," said study co-author Simon Haslett, a geologist at Britain's Bath Spa University. "There is a real risk,
and the U.K. should have a tsunami warning system." The researchers detected proofs of their theory in
gigantic boulders located along the Channel shore. "We found boulders the size of small cars, stacked
in chains like roof tiles. Transporting these boulders would require a prolonged current and couldn't be
the work of a storm. We spotted also unusual erosion features in the channel's bedrock that can't be explained by
wave erosion. These [features] were caused by whirlpools pulling up cobbles [round stones], which acted like a drill to erode
doughnut-shaped depressions in the rock," Haslett explained. Such patterns are the result of water between 33 and 197 ft (10-60
m) deep, unlikely to be the result of a storm surge. Based on the wasted energy, the researchers found that the
tsunami was 20 ft (6 m) tall at the channel's narrowest point and had a speed of 38.7-59.3 ft (11.8-18.1 m) per second. This
matches the historical descriptions of "mighty hilles of water" and a wave that is "affirmed to
have runne with a swiftness so incredible, as that no gray-hounde could have escaped by
running before them." The cause could have been an underwater earthquake or landslide.
"An active fault zone lies off the coast of Ireland, and second-hand reports mention a tremor felt on the morning of January 30,
1607," Haslett said. The Bristol Channel is believed to have suffered the most as the local patterns produced a magnification effect.
"The Bristol Channel gets very narrow at one point, which funnels the water and would have amplified the wave," Haslett said.
Kevin Horsburgh of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool still advocates the storm variant. He believes that the
bedrock traits can be determined by the channel's strong currents. "Bristol Channel has the second largest tide in the world and
tidal currents of up to 8 m (26 ft) per second [26 feet a second], twice a day, every day," he said. But he, too, agrees that
tsunamis still represent an imminent risk . The most recent tsunami recorded in British history is that following
the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 that hit southwestern England. A huge tsunami was found to have hit the Shetland Islands
(Scotland) and eastern coast 8,000 years ago, due to a large underwater landslide off Norway. But a mega-tsunami is
expected to occur on the Canary Islands. "Our research has shown that the world's biggest active landslide is occurring on
the flanks of Cumbre Vieja, a volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma," said Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research
Center at University College London. In case of an eruption, half of the island would slide into the Atlantic Ocean and the
consequent tsunami would hit the East Coast of the US and large portions of Western European shore with waves up to 33 ft (10
m). "One day this eruption will occur. It is a case of when, not if. About 2 % of tsunamis occur in the Atlantic
Ocean, but this figure could become higher in the future. If global warming causes
catastrophic melting of the Greenland ice sheet, then we can expect large landslides to occur
from the glacial sediment sitting offshore," explained McGuire.

Mega tsunamis cause extinction
BBC 04 *British Broadcasting Corporation, 10/19/04, What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dino_trans.shtml, accessed 1/11/13, JTF]

NARRATOR: Keller and Stinnesbeck thought they had won. For them the evidence proved beyond doubt that Chicxulub was far too
old to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. But that was just one way to look at it. When Jan Smit analysed the
core, he saw something quite different. He found evidence that the rock had been created quickly. JAN
SMIT: Look here for instance, you see here ripple marks, there's another layer of ripple marks, there are lines in the rocks,
they all bear evidence for strong currents which implies Tsunami events. NARRATOR: Smit also
examined the layers of green clay mineral. He did his own x-ray diffraction analysis... and found not Glauconite but a different
mineral called Smectite. Smectite can form quickly. JAN SMIT: So they made another mistake, they misidentified the clay mineral
with very severe implications. NARRATOR : And as for Gerta Keller's forams, Smit was in no doubt she had made another big
mistake. He took photographs through a microscope too - he found not a single fossil, just these inorganic crystals. JAN SMIT: On
these fuzzy pictures you can easily claim they are forams but I claim it's a fortuitous combination of those crystals in a very fuzzy
picture. If you take sharper pictures like these with a different method, you see they are totally different. NARRATOR: According to
Smit, all the evidence suggested the core had been formed in just a few days by a Tsunami...
and that meant Chicxulub must be the killer of the dinosaurs. JAN SMIT: This is still one and the
same impact, we have the Chicxulub impact here, very quick sedimentation by Tsunami waves and at the
very end we get the Iridium from the Chicxulub impact so the dinosaurs got extinct right here, as a consequence of
the Chicxulub impact and not by a second impact on some unknown place in the world.
Water
Warming causes massive droughts puts millions at risk and leads to water
wars
Washington Post 07 *Doug Struck, Warming Will Exacerbate Global Water Conflicts, 8-20,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/19/AR2007081900967.html]

As global warming heats the planet, there will be more desperate measures. The climate will be wetter in some
places, drier in others. Changing weather patterns will leave millions of people without dependable
supplies of water for drinking, irrigation and power, a growing stack of studies conclude. At
Stanford University, 170 miles away, Stephen Schneider, editor of the journal Climatic Change and a lead author for the authoritative
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pours himself a cup of tea and says the future is clear. "As the air gets
warmer, there will be more water in the atmosphere. That's settled science," he said. But where, and when, it
comes down is the big uncertainty. "You are going to intensify the hydrologic cycle. Where the atmosphere is configured to have
high pressure and droughts, global warming will mean long, dry periods. Where the atmosphere is configured to
be wet, you will get more rain, more gully washers. "Global warming will intensify drought," he says. "And it will intensify floods."
According to the IPCC, that means a drying out of areas such as southern Europe, the Mideast, North Africa, South Australia,
Patagonia and the U.S. Southwest. These will not be small droughts. Richard Seager, a senior researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory of Columbia University, looked at 19 computer models of the future under current global warming trends. He found
remarkable consistency: Sometime before 2050, the models predicted, the Southwest will be gripped in a dry spell akin to the Great
Dust Bowl drought that lasted through most of the 1930s. The spacing of tree rings suggests there have been numerous periods of
drought going back to A.D. 800, he said. But, "mechanistically, this is different. These projections clearly come from a warming
forced by rising greenhouse gases." Farmers in the Central Valley, where a quilt of lush, green orchards on brown hills displays the
alchemy of irrigation, want to believe this is a passing dry spell. They thought a wet 2006 ended a seven-year drought, but this year
is one of the driest on record. For the first time, state water authorities shut off irrigation pumps to large parts of the valley, forcing
farmers to dig wells. Farther south and east, the once-mighty Colorado River is looking sickly, siphoned by seven states before
dribbling into Mexico. Its reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are drying, leaving accusatory rings on the shorelines and
imperiling river-rafting companies. Seager predicts that drought will prompt dislocations similar to those of the Dust Bowl. "It will
certainly cause movements of people. For example, as Mexico dries out, there will be migration from rural areas to cities and then
the U.S.," he said. "There is an emerging situation of climate refugees." Global warming threatens water supplies in other ways.
Much of the world's fresh water is in glaciers atop mountains. They act as mammoth
storehouses. In wet or cold seasons, the glaciers grow with snow. In dry and hot seasons, the edges slowly melt, gently feeding
streams and rivers. Farms below are dependent on that meltwater; huge cities have grown up on the belief the mountains will
always give them drinking water; hydroelectric dams rely on the flow to generate power. But the atmosphere's temperature is
rising fastest at high altitudes. The glaciers are melting, initially increasing the runoff, but gradually getting smaller and
smaller. Soon, many will disappear. At the edge of the Quelccaya Glacier, the largest ice cap in the Peruvian Andes, Ohio
State University researcher Lonnie Thompson sat in a cold tent at a rarified 17,000 feet. He has spent more time in the oxygen-thin
"death zone" atop mountains than any other scientist, drilling ice cores and measuring glaciers. He has watched the Quelccaya
Glacier shrink by 30 percent in 33 years. Down the mountain, a multitude of rivulets seep from the edge of Quelccaya to irrigate
crops of maize, the water flowing through irrigation canals built by the Incas. Even farther downstream, the runoff helps feed the
giant capital, Lima, another city built in a desert. "What do you think is going to happen when this stops?"
Thompson mused of the water. "Do you think all the people below will just sit there? No. It's crazy to think
they won't go anywhere. And what do you think will happen when they go to places where people
already live?" The potential for conflict is more than theoretical. Turkey, Syria and Iraq
bristle over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt trade threats over the
Nile. The United Nations has said water scarcity is behind the bloody wars in Sudan's Darfur
region. In Somalia, drought has spawned warlords and armies. Already, the World Health Organization says, 1 billion people lack
access to potable water. In northern China, retreating glaciers and shrinking wetlands that feed the Yangtze River prompted
researchers to warn that water supplies for hundreds of millions of people may be at risk.

AT: Adv CPs
AT: Iron Fertilization
Doesnt solve ocean acidification and releases methane.
IPCC 07 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Ocean Fertilization and Other Geo-Engineering Options, 2007;
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch11s11-2-2.html)//Beddow
Iron fertilization of the oceans may be a strategy for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The
idea is that it stimulates the growth of phytoplankton and therefore sequesters CO2 in the form
of particulate organic carbon (POC). There have been eleven field studies in different ocean regions with the primary
aim of examining the impact of iron as a limiting nutrient for phytoplankton by the addition of small quantities (110 tonnes) of iron
sulphate to the surface ocean. In addition, commercial tests are being pursued with the combined (and conflicting) aims of
increasing ocean carbon sequestration and productivity. It should be noted, however, that iron addition will only
stimulate phytoplankton growth in ~30% of the oceans (the Southern Ocean, the equatorial Pacific and the
Sub-Arctic Pacific), where iron depletion prevails. Only two experiments to date (Buesseler and Boyd, 2003) have reported on the
second phase, the sinking and vertical transport of the increased phytoplankton biomass to depths below the main thermocline
(>120m). The efficiency of sequestration of the phytoplankton carbon is low (<10%), with the
biomass being largely recycled back to CO2 in the upper water column (Boyd et al., 2004). This suggests
that the field-study estimates of the actual carbon sequestered per unit iron (and per dollar) are over-estimates. The cost of
large-scale and long-term fertilization will also be offset by CO2 release/emission during the
acquisition, transportation and release of large volumes of iron in remote oceanic regions.
Potential negative effects of iron fertilization include the increased production of methane
and nitrous oxide, deoxygenation of intermediate waters and changes in phytoplankton
community composition that may cause toxic blooms and/or promote changes further along
the food chain. None of these effects have been directly identified in experiments to date, partly due to the time and space
constraints.

Warming Defense
No Warming
No anthropogenic warming and no impact scientific consensus flows our way.
Taylor 2/13 Forbes magazine contributor on energy and environmental issues, citing a survey published by Organization
Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal (James, Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority of Scientists Skeptical of Global Warming
Crisis, 2/13/13; < http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-
skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/>)//Beddow
It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis,
but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus. Dont look now, but maybe a
scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers
believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the
peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents
believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global
warming will not be a very serious problem. The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth
scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized
here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims. According to the newly
published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the Comply with Kyoto model. The scientists
in this group express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the
main or central cause. The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of
scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming
claims. The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the Nature Is Overwhelming
model. In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural,
normal cycles of the Earth. Moreover, they strongly disagree that climate change poses any
significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives. Another group of scientists fit the
Fatalists model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, diagnose climate change as both human- and
naturally caused. Fatalists consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on
their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC
modeling. These scientists are likely to ask, How can anyone take action if research is biased? The next largest group of
scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the Economic Responsibility model. These scientists diagnose climate change
as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the real cause of climate change
is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the nature is
overwhelming adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk
and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and
that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do
to the economy. The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the Regulation Activists model. These
scientists diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight
impact on their personal life. Moreover, They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most
indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate. Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away
the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.
The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the Economic Responsibility model. These scientists
diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the real cause of
climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the nature is overwhelming adherents, they
disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to
believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the
harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy. The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the
respondents, fit the Regulation Activists model. These scientists diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally
caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life. Moreover, They are also skeptical with regard
to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate. Taken together, these four
skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious
concern. One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey
takers. They frequently use terms such as denier to describe scientists who are skeptical of an
asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as speaking against climate
science rather than speaking against asserted climate projections. Accordingly, alarmists will
have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the vast right-wing
climate denial machine. Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists
themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now
have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an
asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to
government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe. People who look
behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged consensus have always known that no such
alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear
that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed
form a scientific consensus. Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away
the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.


Global warming is absurd and has no impact empirics and flawed methods.
Deming 11 geophysicist and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma (David, Why I deny Global Warming,
10/19/11; <http://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/10/david-deming/why-i-deny-global-warming/>)//Beddow
Im a denier for several reasons. There is no substantive evidence that the planet has warmed
significantly or that any significant warming will occur in the future. If any warming does
occur, it likely will be concentrated at higher latitudes and therefore be beneficial. Climate research
has largely degenerated into pathological science, and the coverage of global warming in the media is
tendentious to the point of being fraudulent. Anyone who is an honest and competent scientist must be a denier.
Have you ever considered how difficult it is to take the temperature of the planet Earth? What temperature will you measure? The
air? The surface of the Earth absorbs more than twice as much incident heat from the Sun than the air. But if you measure the
temperature of the surface, what surface are you going to measure? The solid Earth or the oceans? There is twice as much water as
land on Earth. If you decide to measure water temperature, at what depth will you take the measurements? How will the time scale
on which the deep ocean mixes with the shallow affect your measurements? And how, pray tell, will you determine what the
average water temperature was for the South Pacific Ocean a hundred years ago? How will you combine air, land, and sea
temperature measurements? Even if you use only meteorological measurements of air temperature, how will you compensate for
changes in latitude, elevation, and land use? Determining a mean planetary temperature is not
straightforward, but an extremely complicated problem. Even the best data are suspect. Anthony
Watts and his colleagues have surveyed 82.5 percent of stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network. They have found
shockingly that over 70 percent of these stations are likely to be contaminated by errors greater
than 2 deg C [3.6 deg F]. Of the remaining stations, 21.5 percent have inherent errors greater
than 1 deg C. The alleged degree of global warming over the past 150 years is less than 1 deg C.
Yet even in a technologically advanced country like the US, the inherent error in over 90 percent
of the surveyed meteorological stations is greater than the putative signal. And these errors are
not random, but systematically reflect a warming bias related to urbanization. Watts has
documented countless instances of air temperature sensors located next to air conditioning vents or in the middle of asphalt parking
lots. A typical scenario is that a temperature sensor that was in the middle of a pasture a hundred years ago is now surrounded by a
concrete jungle. Urbanization has been a unidirectional process. It is entirely plausible even likely that all of the
temperature rise that has been inferred from the data is an artifact that reflects the growth of
urban heat islands. The denier is portrayed as a person who refuses to accept the plain evidence of his senses. But in fact it
is the alarmist who doesnt know what they are talking about. The temperature of the Earth and how it has varied over the past 150
years is poorly constrained. The person who thinks otherwise does so largely because they have no comprehension of the science.
Most of these people have never done science or thought about the inherent difficulties and uncertainties involved. And what is
global warming anyway? As long ago as the fifth century BC, Socrates pointed out that intelligible definitions are a necessary
precursor to meaningful discussions. The definition of the term global warming shifts with the context of the discussion. If you
deny global warming, then you have denied the existence of the greenhouse effect, a reproducible phenomenon that can be studied
analytically in the laboratory. But if you oppose political action, then global warming metamorphoses into a nightmarish and
speculative planetary catastrophe. Coastal cities sink beneath a rising sea, species suffer from wholesale extinctions, and green
pastures are turned into deserts of choking hot sand. In fact, so-called deniers are not deniers but skeptics. Skeptics do not deny
the existence of the greenhouse effect. Holding all other factors constant, the mean planetary air temperature ought to rise as the
atmosphere accumulates more anthropogenic CO2. Christopher Monckton recently reviewed the pertinent science and concluded
that a doubling of CO2 should result in a temperature increase of about 1 deg C. If this temperature increase mirrors
those in the geologic past, most of it will occur at high latitudes. These areas will become
more habitable for man, plants, and other animals. Biodiversity will increase. Growing seasons
will lengthen. Why is this a bad thing? Any temperature increase over 1 deg C for a doubling of CO2 must come from a positive
feedback from water vapor. Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in Earths atmosphere, and warm air holds more water
than cold air. The theory is that an increased concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere will lead to a positive feedback that
amplifies the warming from CO2 by as much as a factor of three to five. But this is nothing more that speculation. Water vapor
also leads to cloud formation. Clouds have a cooling effect. At the current time, no one knows if the feedback
from water vapor will be positive or negative. Global warming predictions cannot be tested with
mathematical models. It is impossible to validate computer models of complex natural systems.
The only way to corroborate such models is to compare model predictions with what will
happen in a hundred years. And one such result by itself wont be significant because of the possible compounding effects
of other variables in the climate system. The experiment will have to repeated over several one-hundred year cycles. In other words,
the theory of catastrophic global warming cannot be tested or empirically corroborated in a
human time frame. It is hardly conclusive to argue that models are correct because they have reproduced past
temperatures. Im sure they have. General circulation models have so many degrees of freedom that it is possible to endlessly tweak
them until the desired result is obtained. Hindsight is always 20-20. This tells us exactly nothing about a models ability to accurately
predict what will happen in the future. The entire field of climate science and its coverage in the media is tendentious to the point of
being outright fraudulent. Why is it that every media report on CO2 an invisible gas is invariably accompanied by a photograph
of a smokestack emitting particulate matter? Even the cover of Al Gores movie, An Inconvenient Truth, shows a smokestack. Could
it be that its difficult to get people worked up about an invisible, odorless gas that is an integral component of the photosynthetic
cycle? A gas that is essential to most animal and plant life on Earth? A gas that is emitted by their own bodies through respiration?
So you have to deliberately mislead people by showing pictures of smoke to them. Showing one thing when youre talking about
another is fraud. If the case for global warming alarmism is so settled, so conclusive, so irrefutablewhy is it necessary to repeatedly
resort to fraud? A few years ago it was widely reported that the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would
cause poison ivy to grow faster. But of course carbon dioxide causes almost all plants to grow faster. And
nearly all of these plants have beneficial human uses. Carbon dioxide fertilizes hundreds or
thousands of human food sources. More CO2 means trees grow faster. So carbon dioxide
promotes reforestation and biodiversity. Its good for the environment. But none of this was reported.
Instead, the media only reported that global warming makes poison ivy grow faster. And this is but one example of hundreds or
thousands of such misleading reports. If sea ice in the Arctic diminishes, it is cited as irrefutable proof of
global warming. But if sea ice in the Antarctic increases, it is ignored. Even cold weather events
are commonly invoked as evidence for global warming. People living in the future will look back and wonder
how we could have been so delusional. For the past few years I have remained silent concerning the Climategate emails.
But what they revealed is what many of us already knew was going on: global warming research
has largely degenerated into what is known as pathological science, a process of wishful data
interpretation. When I testified before the US Senate in 2006, I stated that a major climate researcher told me in 1995 that
we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. The existence and global nature of the
Medieval Warm Period had been substantiated by literally hundreds of research articles
published over decades. But it had to be erased from history for ideological reasons. A few years
later the infamous hockey stick appeared. The hockey stick was a revisionist attempt to rewrite the
temperature history of the last thousand years. It has been discredited as being deeply flawed. In
one Climategate email, a supposed climate scientist admitted to hiding the decline. In other words,
hiding data that tended to disprove his ideological agenda. Another email described how alarmists
would try to keep critical manuscripts from being published in the peer-reviewed scientific
literature. One of them wrote, well keep them out somehow even if we have to redefine what the peer-
review literature is! Gee. If the climate science that validates global warming is so unequivocal, why is it necessary to work
behind the scenes to suppress dissent? You doth protest too much. As described in my book, Science and Technology in World
History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization, systematic science began with the invocation of naturalism by Greek
philosophers and Hippocratic physicians c. 600-400 BC. But the critical attitude adopted by the Greeks was as important as
naturalism. Students were not only allowed to criticize their teachers, but were encouraged to do so. From its beginnings in Greek
natural philosophy, science has been an idealistic and dispassionate search for truth. As Plato explained, anyone who could point out
a mistake shall carry off the palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend. This is one reason that scientists enjoy so much respect. The
public assumes that a scientists pursuit of truth is unencumbered by political agendas. But science does not come easy to men.
Science, George Sarton reminded us, is a joykiller. The proper conduct of science requires a high degree of intellectual discipline
and rigor. Scientists are supposed to use multiple working hypotheses and sort through these by the processes of corroboration and
falsification. The most valuable evidence is that which tends to falsify or disprove a theory. A scientist, by the very definition of his
activity, must be skeptical. A scientist engaged in a dispassionate search for truth elevates the critical he does not suppress it.
Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit. Finally, Im happy to be known as a denier because the label of denier
says nothing about me, but everything about the person making the charge. Scientific theories are never denied or believed, they
are only corroborated or falsified. Scientific knowledge, by its very nature, is provisional and subject to revision. The provisional
nature of scientific knowledge is a necessary consequence of the epistemological basis of science. Science is based on observation.
We never have all the data. As our body of data grows, our theories and ideas must necessarily evolve. Anyone who thinks scientific
knowledge is final and complete must necessarily endorse as a corollary the absurd proposition that the process of history has
stopped. A scientific theory cannot be denied. Only a belief can be denied. The person who uses the word denier thus reveals
that they hold global warming as a belief, not a scientific theory. Beliefs are the basis of revealed religion. Revelations cannot be
corroborated or studied in the laboratory, so religions are based on dogmatic beliefs conservatively held. Religions tend to be closed
systems of belief that reject criticism. But the sciences are open systems of knowledge that welcome criticism. Im a scientist, and
therefore I must happily confess to being a denier.


No warming modeling fails, cooling now, no tipping point, causal-correlative
mistakes, resilient Arctic AND warming strengthens the biosphere.
Hayden 09 Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Connecticut, editor of The Energy Advocate, speaker at the
International Conference on Climate Change (Howard C., Physicist Howard Haydens One-Letter Disproof of Global Warming
Claims, 10/29/12; < http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/41453.html>)//Beddow
It has been often said that the science is settled on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this
claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false. The letter is s, the one that changes model into
models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.
Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along
with the research funds that have kept those models alive. We can take this further. Not a single climate model
predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it. Let me
next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a tipping point. Anybody
who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output goes to the rail. Not only that, but
it stays there. Thats the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASAGISS) and Al Gore. But therein lies the proof
that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2
concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be
here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of
glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last
300 million years. Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading to
global warming. (A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind.
The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful
contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any
fuels. They simply assume that it would be the pre-industrial value. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and
increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans
to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. (B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect.
The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude
that CO2 is responsible for the current warming? Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that
CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased? A warmer world
is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is
overwhelming that warmer is better. The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the
biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can
make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive
enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple. CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition. A warmer world
begets more precipitation. All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient
between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent
storms. The melting point of ice is 0 C in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest
recorded temperature at the South Pole is 14 C, and the lowest is 117 C. How, pray, will a
putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the
warming alarmists? Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the
term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical
attributions. If it warms up, thats climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof
of climate change. In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin proved that the earth could not possibly be as old as the
geologists said. He proved it using the conservation of energy. What he didnt know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation,
provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth. Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have proved that CO2 causes global
warming. Except when it doesnt. To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of
science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able
to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.


Not anthro prefer empirics to flawed models.
Evans 07 - mathematician, computer and electrical engineer and head of Science Speak writing for Ludwig von Mises Institute of
Economics (David M.W., I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train, 5/28/07; http://mises.org/daily/2571)//Beddow
But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence above fell away. Using the same point numbers as above:
Better data shows that from 1940 to 1975 the earth cooled while atmospheric carbon
increased. That 35 year non-correlation might eventually be explained by global dimming, only discovered in about 2003. The
temporal resolution of the ice core data improved. By 2004 we knew that in past warming events, the
temperature increases generally started about 800 years before the rises in atmospheric
carbon. Causality does not run in the direction I had assumed in 1999 it runs the opposite
way! It took several hundred years of warming for the oceans to give off more of their carbon.
This proves that there is a cause of global warming other than atmospheric carbon. And while it
is possible that rising atmospheric carbon in these past warmings then went on to cause more
warming ("amplification" of the initial warming), the ice core data neither proves nor disproves
this hypothesis. There is now a credible alternative suspect. In October 2006 Henrik Svensmark showed experimentally that
cosmic rays cause cloud formation. Clouds have a net cooling effect, but for the last three decades there have been fewer clouds
than normal because the sun's magnetic field, which shields us from cosmic rays, has been stronger than usual. So the earth heated
up. It's too early to judge what fraction of global warming is caused by cosmic rays. There is now no observational
evidence that global warming is caused by carbon emissions. You would think that in over 20 years of
intense investigation we would have found something. For example, greenhouse warming due to carbon emissions should warm the
upper atmosphere faster than the lower atmosphere but until 2006 the data showed the opposite, and thus that the greenhouse
effect was not occurring! In 2006 better data allowed that the effect might be occurring, except in the tropics. The only
current "evidence" for blaming carbon emissions are scientific models (and the fact that there
are few contradictory observations). Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and
models, but by repeatable observations. Some theories held by science authorities have turned out to be
spectacularly wrong: heavier-than-air flight is impossible, the sun orbits the earth, etc. For excellent reasons, we have much more
confidence in observations by several independent parties than in models produced by a small set of related parties!


Models Bad
97% of climatologists may agree with you, but 98% of their data is wrong.
Taylor 7/13 - managing editor of Environment and Climate News, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, environmentalist JD
from Syracuse University (James M., IPCC Lead Author Says Climate Models are Failing, 7/13/13; <
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2013/07/13/ipcc-lead-author-says-climate-models-are-failing>)//Beddow
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author Hans von Storch told Der Spiegel that climate models
are having a difficult time replicating the lack of global warming during the past 15 years. So far,
no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break," said Storch. Storch said
the models say the planet should be warming much more than it has. "According to most climate models, we
should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn't
happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a value very close to
zero," Storch told Der Spiegel. "This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year. 98 Percent of
Models Wrong IPCC may have to revise its climate models to reflect real-world climate conditions, Storch noted. "At my
institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations.
The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98
percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to
more of a temperature increase," Storch told the magazine. "If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the
latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate
models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it
very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations," he explained. Rewards of
Scientific Method Hans von Storch is simply doing what all real scientists do: examine the most recently available data and use it to
guide your path to conclusions, meteorologist Anthony Watts, proprietor of the popular WattsUpWithThat.com climate science
website, told Environment & Climate News. The nature of science is to go where the data tells you to go, not to go where you
believe you should, and that is what von Storch is doing as a scientist, Watts explained. Meanwhile, those who go in the direction
they believe they should goor are told to goare continuing on like lemmings marching to the sea, blissfully unaware that the
road of science has a U-turn sign up ahead. The belief-system pileup at the U-turn will be something to behold. The latest
admission regarding the failure of IPCC's climate models in accounting for the stasis in the global temperature trend for the past 15
years is really no surprise, Cambridge, Massachusetts climate scientist Willie Soon said. It is merely professor Hans von Storch
reporting the scientific evidence in an honest manner. The IPCC climate models have a long history of predicting too much warming,
and Storchs observations show that is still the case. There is a strong disconnect between carbon dioxide
emissions and global temperatures. The evidence for this is every day becoming more difficult to
deny, Soon added.


Models fail-only historical data is predictive
Cooper et al 13 (P.J.RSchool of Agriculture, Policy and De velopment, University of Reading, UK R. D. Statistical Services
Centre, University of Reading, UK M. Noguer and J. M. Gathenya Walker Institute for Climate System R esearch, University of
Reading, UK Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa: Foundations for the
Futurehttp://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/42002/InTech-
Climate_change_adaptation_strategies_in_sub_saharan_africa_foundations_for_the_future.pdf
Trend analyses: Given the uncertainties of climate chan ge projections (see Section 2) and the fact
that such uncertainties become greater as smaller time and spatial scales are desired, trend
analyses of existing long-term histor ical climate data can be considered as the gold
standard of assessing the extent of current clim ate change at locations where adaptation research is
being undertaken [36]. It is important for two reasons: Firstly, using appropriate statistical curve fitting approaches to long-term
data sets helps avoid the danger of mistaking short term trends of a few seasons with long- term climate change. Such cycles
can be relatively long-term (see Figure 3 for Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) or shorter term as il
lustrated for total seasonal rainfall at Makindu in Kenya (Figure 6) where the sh ort term
wetting and drying cycles are apparent (e.g. 1963-1966, 1974-1978, 2000-2004), but fitting a line to the complete
dataset showed no significant trend in either direction. This is in contrast to fitting curves to the maximum
and minimum temperature data from the same location (Figure 7). Whilst the same sort of season-to-season
variability in temperature is noted, fitting a curve to the complete dataset did show a significant increase in both maximum and
minimum temperature Secondly, a great deal of research currently underway within SSA is centred on survey work that investigates
farmers perceptions of climate risk and possible climate change and their associated coping and adaptation strategies. Having
long-term weather data at hand to compare farmers perceptions wi th the hard risk an d
trend analyses of recorded weather data can be invaluable in identifying to what extent they
are correct or indeed whether perhaps they are respondi ng to other drivers of change. This is
exactly what happened in the studies in se mi-arid Kenya by [14]. Farmers perceived that climate change had caused declinin g
rainfall amounts since the early 1990s and which they felt had resulted in declining ma ize yields. However, trend analyses of the
long-term historical rainfall data from 5 lo cations in the study ar ea showed no decline in rainfall amounts or changes in their dist
ribution patterns. Further studies, whilst confirming that district level yields had indeed declined as perceived by farmers, showed
that this was due to (i) a reduction in fertilizer use as a result of an increase in its price following structural readjustment during the
1990s, and (ii) migration of farmers to land with a lower yield potential due to population pressure. It was not due to climate
change. To be able to perform climate risks analysis an d trend analysis of any long-term data
record, the use of statistical packages is imperative for researches to be able to produce real
evidence of change and hence be able to give evidence based advice.

Alt Cause
Alt cause methane hydrate
Lewis, Science News, 12 [Tanya, Science News, 10/24/12, Gulf Stream might be releasing seafloor methane,
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346009/description/Gulf_Stream_might_be_releasing_seafloor_methane, accessed
1/27/13, JTF]

While its no ice-nine, a frozen form of methane trapped in ocean sediments could be cause for
concern. Warm Gulf Stream waters off the east coast of North America are converting large amounts of
the substance into methane gas, which could lead to underwater landslides and influence global
climate. A good portion of the biological carbon on Earth is stored in the seafloor as methane hydrate, a frozen mixture of
methane and water formed at high pressure and low temperature. Changes in the temperature or direction of
the Gulf Stream, which carries warm water north from the Gulf of Mexico, have heated sediments in a strip
along the North Atlantic seafloor by 8 degrees Celsius, unlocking 2.5 billion metric tons of
methane from deep-sea caches, scientists report in the Oct. 25 Nature. This is the first study to suggest that methane
hydrate melting is related to ocean currents themselves, says study coauthor Benjamin Phrampus, an Earth scientist at Southern
Methodist University in Dallas. Previous studies suggested that the global ocean temperature would have to increase to cause
hydrate breakdown, which would take a very huge input of energy, he says. We dont need this large amount of energy to explain
this. Its simply a change in the ocean currents. In Kurt Vonneguts 1963 novel Cats Cradle, the fictional substance ice-nine
crystallizes all liquid water it touches, with the power to wipe out all life on Earth in an instant. The conversion of methane hydrate
to gas isnt nearly so apocalyptic, though. While methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than
CO2, at the depths its being released most of the methane will never reach the atmosphere.
Instead, it will dissolve in seawater, where microbes will guzzle it up and convert it to CO2.
Even if methane does reach the surface, its lifetime in air is only about 10 years. To affect global
warming, youd have to add quite a bit of methane to the atmosphere to really move the needle much, says geophysicist Carolyn
Ruppel of the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Mass. Where it becomes a problem, Ruppel says, is if
sediments retain the methane gas, which could make underwater slopes much more prone to
landslides. These slides might release even more methane from the seabed or trigger
tsunamis. Unstable hydrates may have caused the giant Cape Fear slide in this region of the North Atlantic, and similar ones
could release an order of magnitude more gas than whats already escaping. Sudden methane hydrate release has
been proposed as the cause of global warming events like the Paleocene-Eocene thermal
maximum, a rapid spike in global temperature of more than 5 degrees Celsius that occurred
about 55 million years ago. Compared with the PETM, the amount of gas being released by hydrates off of the U.S. east
coast is very small, says Phrampus, but he notes that its very unlikely that this is the only part of the world where its occurring.

Author Indict
Their authors are paid-off and manufacture a false consensus based on flawed
science and censorship.
Jasper 5/22 senior editor of TNA, top investigative reporter, attendant of several international UN conferences, author
(William F., Climate Consensus Con Game: Desperate Effort Before Release of UN Report, 5/22/13; <
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/15465-climate-consensus-con-game-desperate-effort-before-release-of-
un-report>)//Beddow
The UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in trouble, and climate alarmists are
hoping the much-ballyhooed report by Australian activist John Cook, released last week, will convince the public to be very afraid of
global warming. The last few years have not been kind to the global-warming alarmists. In the 17th century, Franois, Duc de La
Rochefoucauld is credited with famously quipping, There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of
facts. Unfortunately, for the climate catastrophists, their pet theory (though hardly beautiful) has
been slaughtered many times over by a brutal and relentless onslaught of facts. Unfortunately, for the
rest of us, however, the global-warming alarmists keep coming back like the undead in a B-grade horror flick. The
fanatical proponents of anthropogenic (human caused) global warming, or AGW, have powerful
supporters with deep pockets who keep resuscitating them. They have a massive institutional
base among Big Government, Big Media, Big Foundations, Big Business, and Big Green, all of
which have huge incentives to perpetuate AGW alarmism. No matter how many times the AGW
fearmongers predictions are shot down, they are resurrected and sent back to frighten more
voters/taxpayers into submission to global policies, taxes, and controls. Utilizing brute power and
deception, they intend to reverse de La Rochefoucaulds prediction and see the facts murdered by their own triumphant theory. As
we have reported ("Global Warming 'Consensus': Cooking the Books") AGW activist John Cook has been the recipient of a media
promotion bonanza for his recent study claiming that 97 percent of climate scientists endorse the global-warming alarmist position.
President Obama and Big Media turned it into a claim that 97 percent of all scientists endorse the AGW position. Both claims are
wrong. Stung by numerous setbacks, the AGW lobby is desperately attempting to regain ground through a giant bluff, hoping that
their false claim of the near unanimity of all scientists will convince politicians and the public to give them the global power and
funding they crave. Among the many fatal blows the climate alarmists have sustained along the way
and managed to bounce back from are: Climategate (see here, here, here, and here),
Climategate 2, Glaciergate, Polar beargate (see here and here), Himalayagate, Amazongate, Sea
levelgate, Hockey stickgate, and more than 120 additional scandals that have repeatedly
exposed the discredited premises, fraudulent research, and faulty computer models on which
the AGW fright pedaling empire has been built. The Next Big IPCC Propaganda Push Now the United Nations IPCC
is getting set to release the first of three installments of its latest Assessment Report. And the powers that be are obviously
concerned that they do not have sufficient public support in the United States to get Congress to enact the type of trillion-dollar
transfers and the complete transformation of the world envisioned. The IPCC is scheduled to release its Working Group I (WGI)
report on the physical science basis of its latest Assessment in September, and they are desperate to gain support for it. In addition
to the main stumbling block of American public resistance, they are also running into problems with European countries that once
appeared to be locked in as supporters, but which are now revolting due to the crushing costs of alternative green energy and
their own mounting debt and fiscal problems. Many of these countries are jumping ship and now want to switch to the more
affordable natural gas that is flooding the global market, thanks to new fracking technology. This has the UN and the globalists in a
dither. Last September, Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the UNs International Energy Agency, warned that governments are
feeling more and more uncomfortable to put money in renewables especially in the days of austerity, and some governments are
cutting their support." "The availability of cheap or lower gas prices are putting additional pressure on renewable energies," Birol
said. This is a bad thing, said the UN economist. Reuters gave this report on Birols apocalyptic warning regarding these
developments: Birol said that any reduction in investment in renewable energy would increase the risk of an increase in global
temperatures by 6 degree Celsius this century, describing the current trend as "catastrophic." "If there are no urgent and bold
policies put in place the door to a 2 degrees trajectory, the door to a normal life for us and for our children, will be closed and will be
closed forever," he said. The increase in global temperatures by 6 degree Celsius this century is one of the many absurd and
persistent claims made by AGW fanatics. Dr. William Happer, one of Americas preeminent physicists and
a professor of physics at Princeton University, explains here why the six-degree increase
bogeyman is ridiculous and completely without foundation in science. (A less technical laymans version
of the Happer article is available here.) Many of the worlds leading authorities in climatology, meteorology, atmospheric physics,
paleo-geology, and many other disciplines (see below) have been weighing in on the skeptical/realist side over the past few years
and taking the position that it is beyond irresponsible for scientists and politicians to burden humanity with enormous and
unprecedented tax and regulatory burdens based merely on frightening computer model scenarios that cannot sustain critical
scientific examination. In science, facts and truth are discovered by measurement and experiment,
independent of surveys, opinion, popularity contests, and consensus. A fact remains a fact
whether or not one percent, 97 percent, or 100 percent of scientists believe it to be a fact. And,
conversely, a falsehood remains false even if 97 percent or even 100 percent of scientists
believe it to be true. The history of science is littered with many discarded falsehoods that were once universally embraced
by the scientific consensus of the day. Nevertheless, a credible claim of a consensus of 97 percent near unanimity of scientists
specializing in climate research (or any area of science) is not one that the common layman can, or should, lightly dismiss. After all,
we laymen must rely on expert scientific opinion, on specialists, for many important issues involving health, medicine, energy,
national defense, etc. And if virtually all scientists say something is true, we would be foolish to challenge their claims unless we
have extraordinary evidence to the contrary. There are key words and questions involved here: Do we have a credible claim of
consensus of 97%, or is there extraordinary evidence to the contrary? The answer to the former is a resounding No, and to the
latter an equally resounding Yes. Crash Goes the Phony Consensus One of the biggest lies of the AGW alarmist camp has been that
virtually all scientists of any stature and expertise support the claims of AGW activists. Only old dinosaurs unfamiliar with modern
climate research or corrupt scientists bought off by the fossil fuel industry disagree, goes their argument. The truth is strikingly at
odds with this claim. As we noted last year ('Climate Science' in Shambles: Real Scientists Battle UN Agenda") two of the most
important AGW scientist activists have jumped ship and now battle against the cause they once supported: James Lovelock (photo
above), the British inventor, NASA scientist, author, and originator of the Gaia Hypothesis; and Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, a
founding father of Germanys environmental movement and a director of one of Europes largest alternative energy companies. But
that dynamic duo comprises only a minute fraction of the thousands of distinguished scientists who take issue
with the AGW activists. In the same article last year, we noted that some of the IPCCs severest critics are scientists who
have served as lead authors and expert reviewers of IPCC reports and have witnessed from the inside the blatant bias and politics
masquerading as science. Former and current IPCC experts who have spoken out against the IPCCs abuse of science include such
prominent scientists as: Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences;
Mike Hulme, professor of climate science at East Anglia University where the Climategate e-mails were hacked; Dr. Richard
Lindzen, MIT climate physicist and Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences;
Dr. John Christy, climatologist of the University of Alabama in Huntsville and NASA; Dr. Lee C. Gerhard, past director and state
geologist with the Kansas Geological Society and senior scientist emeritus of the University of Kansas; Dr. Patrick J. Michaels,
former Virginia State climatologist, a UN IPCC reviewer, and University of Virginia professor of environmental sciences; Dr. Vincent
Gray, New Zealand chemist and climate researcher; Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, geologist/geochemist, head of the Geological Museum in
Norway; and Dr. John T. Everett, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) senior manager and project
manager for the UN Atlas of the Oceans. In 2010, Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com published an important 321-page report
featuring the statements of more than 1,000 renowned scientists worldwide who have challenged the IPCCs manmade global-
warming claims. (The full report may be downloaded for free, as a PDF, here.) The 1,000+ lineup of scientists reads like a Whos Who
of the global scientific community. It includes: Dr. Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist; Dr. William Happer,
Cyrus Fogg Bracket professor of physics, Princeton University; Dr. Leonard Weinstein, 35 years at the NASA Langley Research
Center and presently a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace; Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Prize-winning
Stanford University physicist, formerly a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Dr. Anatoly Levitin, the
head of the geomagnetic variations laboratory at the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of
the Russian Academy of Sciences; Dr. Hans Jelbring, Swedish climatologist of the Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics Unit at
Stockholm University; Burt Rutan, renowned engineer, inventor, and aviation/space pioneer; Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, emeritus
professor of physics, and founding director, International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Dr. Bjarne
Andresen, physicist, and professor, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor,
isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, University of Ottawa, Canada. And if still more proof is needed that the science is not
settled as Al Gore, the IPCC, the UN, and other members of the alarmist choir claim more than 31,000 scientists in the United
States have signed a petition urging the U.S. government to reject the types of actions that have been proposed at UN forums in
Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, and Rio. The Petition Project, organized by Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and
Medicine and Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates a resounding
rejection of claims that there is any kind of "overwhelming consensus" that anthropogenic
global warming is a crisis or serious threat. The petition reads, in part: The proposed limits on greenhouse gases
would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or
other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic
heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Many of the scientists cited
above, as well as hundreds more among those featured in the ClimateDepot study cited, have published peer-reviewed articles in
scientific journals, but as our report on the Cook study noted, these articles by skeptic/realist authors have been systematically
filtered out of the lists of accepted studies, with the obvious intent of supporting the thesis that published scientists overwhelmingly
subscribe to the manmade global warming thesis. The Cook study claimed to be able to find only 78 published studies that
supported the skeptical viewpoint. However, PopularTechnology.net published a list of 1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers
Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm, which, again, underscores the shoddy
(or intentionally censorious and dishonest) research involved in the celebrated Cook study.
Censorship Exposed Since we've mentioned censorship, it is worthy of note that the 2009
Climategate e-mail scandal at East Anglia University exposed a vicious and seamy side of the
climate-change fraternity that outraged even many of the alarmists supporters. As shown here,
here, and here, some of the most famous scientists, journals, and institutions promoting AGW
alarmism have unethically and maliciously blocked (and/or attempted to block) the publication
of papers by fellow scientists who were considered to be opponents of AGW, or who were
considered to be simply insufficiently alarmist. Some of the alarmists went even further,
attempting to destroy the reputations of skeptics and/or get them fired. If they cant achieve their
consensus one way, theyll get it another. As we draw closer to the release of the IPCCs WGI report in September, we can expect
that the campaign of climate-alarmist misinformation and disinformation will intensify.


Empirics prove no warming and impacts are hyperbolic their authors use
fraudulent data and are ideologically biased.
Deming 09 geophysicist and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma (David, Global Warming is a Fraud, 6/29/09; <
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/06/david-deming/global-warming-is-a-fraud/>)//Beddow
As the years pass and data accumulate, it is becoming evident that global warming is a fraud.
Climate change is natural and ongoing, but the Earth has not warmed significantly over the last
thirty years. Nor has there been a single negative effect of any type that can be unambiguously attributed to global warming. As
I write, satellite data show that the mean global temperature is the same that it was in 1979. The extent of global sea ice is also
unchanged from 1979. Since the end of the last Ice Age, sea level has risen more than a hundred meters. But for the last three
years, there has been no rise in sea level. If the polar ice sheets are melting, why isnt sea level
rising? Global warming is supposed to increase the severity and frequency of tropical storms.
But hurricane and typhoon activity is at a record low. Every year in the US, more than forty thousand people are
killed in traffic accidents. But not one single person has ever been killed by global warming. The number of species that
have gone extinct from global warming is exactly zero. Both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice
Sheets are stable. The polar bear population is increasing. There has been no increase in
infectious disease that can be attributed to climate change. We are not currently experiencing
more floods, droughts, or forest fires. In short, there is no evidence of any type to support the
idea that we are entering an era when significant climate change is occurring and will cause
the deterioration of either the natural environment or the human standard of living. Why do
people think the planet is warming? One reason is that the temperature data from weather stations appear to be hopelessly
contaminated by urban heat effects. A survey of the 1221 temperature stations in the US by meteorologist Anthony Watts and his
colleagues is now more than 80 percent complete. The magnitude of putative global warming over the last 150 years is about 0.7 C.
But only 9 percent of meteorological stations in the US are likely to have temperature errors lower than 1 C. More than two-thirds of
temperature sensors used to estimate global warming are located near artificial heating sources such as air conditioning vents,
asphalt paving, or buildings. These sources are likely to introduce artifacts greater than 2 C into the temperature record. Another
cause of global warming hysteria is the infiltration of science by ideological zealots who place
politics above truth. Earlier this month, the Obama administration issued a report that concluded global warming would
have a number of deleterious effects on the US. In 1995, one of the lead authors of this report told me that we
had to alter the historical temperature record by getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period. The
Obama report refers to six times the work of a climate scientist named Stephen H. Schneider. In 1989,
Schneider told Discover magazine that we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified,
dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Schneider concluded
each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. Schneiders position is not unusual. In
2007, Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in Britain, told the Guardian newspaper
that scientists and politicians must trade truth for influence. While releasing a politicized report that
prostitutes science to politics, the Obama administration simultaneously suppressed an internal EPA report that concluded there
were glaring inconsistencies between the scientific data and the hypothesis that carbon
dioxide emissions were changing the climate. If we had an appreciation for history, we would not be fooled so
easily. It has all happened before, albeit on a smaller scale in an age where people had more
common sense. On May 19, 1912, the Washington Post posed these questions: Is the climate of
the world changing? Is it becoming warmer in the polar regions? On November 2, 1922, the Associated Press reported that
the Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the waters too hot. On
February 25, 1923, the New York Times concluded that the Arctic appears to be warming up. On December 21, 1930, the Times
noted that Alpine glaciers are in full retreat. A few months later the New York Times concluded that there was a radical change in
climatic conditions and hitherto unheard of warmth in Greenland. About the only thing that has changed at the Times since 1930 is
that no one working there today is literate enough to use the word hitherto. After the warm weather of the 1930s
gave way to a cooling trend beginning in 1940, the media began speculating on the imminent
arrival of a new Ice Age. We have now come full circle, mired in a hopeless cycle of reincarnated
ignorance. H. L. Mencken understood this process when he explained the whole aim of
practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of
them imaginary.


Methane
No risk of methane if bursts occur, scientists agree they wont be
catastrophic.
Schiermeier 08 science and policy expert, studies climate, oceanography, fisheries, and earth science, cartographer,
graduate in geography, stats, and econ from University of Munich, writer for Nature international weekly journal of science (Quirin,
Fears surface over methane leaks, 9/26/08, http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080926/full/455572a.html)//Beddow
Preliminary data from two Arctic cruises suggest that rising temperatures are already causing
substantial amounts of methane to be released from beneath the ocean floor. But catastrophic
gas leaks, like those believed to have occurred 55 million years ago, are unlikely, scientists say. In
the past few weeks, scientists aboard the British research ship James Clark Ross have discovered more than 250 plumes of methane
bubbling up along the continental margin northwest of Svalbard. The findings add to a similar discovery by a Russian team in August,
that reported elevated methane concentrations near the Lena River delta, as part of the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS).
The findings have provoked alarmist media reports predicting massive methane bursts that could accelerate global warming.
Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, although it is present in much lower concentrations in the
atmosphere. But the phenomenon is probably not new. The scientists believe that methane has
been released in the region for at least 15,000 years. "What we're now seeing certainly did not start in the last
year or so," says geophysicist Graham Westbrook of the University of Birmingham, UK, who led the British team. "We have
observed increased methane concentrations in the Laptev Sea during several expeditions since
the mid-1990s," says Igor Semiletov, who oversees the ISSS methane programme aboard the Russian research ship Jacob
Smirnitskyi. "But the data set is extremely limited. Whether what we're seeing in the region is of any
relevance for the global climate is mere speculation." Semiletov says that the scientists did measure higher
concentrations of dissolved methane this summer compared to summer sampling in 2003 and 2004 (N. Shakhova and I. Semiletov J.
Mar. Sys. 66, 227243; 2007). At one ice-covered site in the mere 50-metre shelf water, they detected methane bubbling at the
surface, indicating that at least some of the gas released at the seabed is escaping into the atmosphere before being consumed by
bacteria in the water column. Geologists think that billions of tonnes of methane lie beneath the sub-sea permafrost in some parts
of the shallow Siberian shelf, although estimates vary widely. The hydrocarbon trapped there either as a gas, or bound in solid
ice-like structures called methane hydrates is a remnant from the last ice age when the sea level was about 100 metres lower.
The big fear is that the methane could escape as a result of the permafrost becoming porous,
possibly from an increased influx of freshwater from the relatively warm Lena River. "The risk is
real," says Hans-Wolfgang Hubberten, a permafrost expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute of
Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany. "But there's no reason to panic. Claims that
gas hydrates are on the brink of dissociating in a big way should be taken with a large pinch of
salt." Thermal modelling suggests that the marine permafrost in the region is relatively stable.
However, drillings conducted in 2005 revealed that the permafrost may have slightly warmed and thinned (V. Rachold et al. Eos 88,
149156; 2007). Even so, says Hubberten, it is likely that the observed emissions come from 'new' methane produced by increased
bacterial activity in thawing soil, rather than from degradation of ancient gas hydrates.
AT: Bio-D
Warming improves biodiversity.
Goklany 12 science and technology policy analyst for the US Department of the Interior, Assistant Director of Programs,
Science, and Technology Policy, represented the US at the IPCC, rapporteur for the Resource Use and Management Subgroup of
Working Group III of the IPCC First Assessment Report, PhD in electrical engineering (Indur M., Is Climate Change the Number One
Threat to Humanity? 8/28/12; http://goklany.org/library/Goklany_WIREs.pdf)//Beddow
Despite concerns about the ecological impacts of warming, the FTA studies suggest that it may actually
reduce existing stresses on ecosystems and biodiversity through 20852100. Table 4, provides FTA results for
20852100 regarding the variation in three specific ecological indicators across the different IPCC scenarios. 23,25 One indicator is
the net biome productivity (a measure of the terrestrial biospheres net carbon sink capacity). The second indicator is the area of
cropland (a crude measure of the amount of habitat converted to human use; the lower it is, the better is it for maintaining
biodiversity and ecosystems). Such land conversion to agriculture is perhaps the single largest threat to global terrestrial
biodiversity. 114,115 The third indicator is the global loss of coastal wetlands relative to 1990 levels. The table shows that
biospheres sink capacity under each scenario would be higher in 2100 than in the base year
(1990), largely due to higher CO 2 concentrations and because these effects were not projected
to be overridden by the negative effects of higher temperatures over that period. For the same
reasons, global sink capacity would be higher for the A1FI and A2 scenarios. Partly for the same reasons and its lower population
compared to other scenarios, the amount of cropland in 2100 would be lowest for the A1FI world. This is followed by the B1 and B2
worlds. [Levy et al. did not provide cropland estimates for the A2 scenario.] Thus, through 2100 the warmest (A1FI)
scenario would have the least habitat loss and, therefore, pose the smallest risk to terrestrial
biodiversity and ecosystems, while the B2 scenario would pose the greatest risk to habitat, biodiversity and ecosystems.
Regarding coastal wetlands, although losses due to sea level rise (SLR) are substantial, the
contribution of global warming to total losses in 2085 are smaller than losses due to subsidence
from other man made causes. 23 Table 4 shows that wetland losses are much higher for the A1FI and A2 scenarios than
for the B1 and B2 scenarios. This is, however, due mainly to the assumption that the first two scenarios would have higher non
climate change related subsidence (Ref. 23, p. 76) but this assumption is questionable. 9

AT: Water
Global warming reduces water shortages precipitation, empirics, and
adaptation.
Goklany 12 science and technology policy analyst for the US Department of the Interior, Assistant Director of Programs,
Science, and Technology Policy, represented the US at the IPCC, rapporteur for the Resource Use and Management Subgroup of
Working Group III of the IPCC First Assessment Report, PhD in electrical engineering (Indur M., Is Climate Change the Number One
Threat to Humanity? 8/28/12; http://goklany.org/library/Goklany_WIREs.pdf)//Beddow
The possibility of water shortages leading to droughts and hunger are recurring themes in the climate change literature. 31,33
However, several global impact studies indicate that warming may reduce net global PAR for water
stress. Deaths from droughts are probably the best indicator of the socioeconomic impact of
such water shortages. However, since the 1920s despite a more than tripling of the global
population, deaths and death rates from droughts have declined by 99.97% and 99.99%,
respectively. 50 Yet another concern is access to safer water. But between 1990 and 2008, although global population
increased 27%, the percentage of global population with such access increased from 76.8% to 86.8%. This translates into an
additional 1.8 billion people gaining access to safer water over this period. 110,111 Simultaneously, 1.3 billion more people got
access to improved sanitation. Even in Sub Saharan Africa the population with access to improved
water sources increased from 48.9% to 59.7% from 19902008, which translates into 240 million
additional people. Such improvements attest to the fact that despite any warming, climate
sensitive indicators of human well being can and have advanced. That is, human adaptive
responses have more than offset any possible deterioration from warming. Regarding the future,
Figure 5 provides estimates of the global PAR for water stress in 2085 from the FTA water resources analysis. 21 It displays changes
in PAR due to climate change alone and total PAR after climate change. Despite totally ignoring autonomous adaptations which,
therefore, overestimates net adverse impacts, the FTA study indicates that warming could, as previously noted,
reduce net global PAR for water stress. 78 This occurs because warming should increase global
precipitation, and although some areas may receive less precipitation, other, more populated
areas are, serendipitously, projected to receive more. Other studies, e.g., Oki and Kanaes review of global
freshwater impact studies, also suggest a net decline in water stress due to warming 112 . Similarly, Alcamo
et al. 26 found that by 2050, relative to current conditions, water stress would increase in 62%76% of total global river basin area
but decrease in 20%29% under the A2 and B2 scenarios. However, in only 10% of the area would climate change be the principal
cause of the increasing stress. In the other 90%, it would be higher water withdrawals. On the other hand, climate change would be
the major factor in most of the area (approximately 5080%) experiencing decreasing stress. More recently, van Vuuren et al. 34
found that net PAR for water stress would decline in 2100 under a scenario corresponding to a global temperature increase of 3.5 C
above the 1960 1990 average. This analysis also ignored changes in adaptive capacity which, as noted,
overestimates increases in the water stressed population while underestimating declines. Using
a similar methodology, Arnell et al.s (2011) 113 results also show that the net increase in the water
stressed population from 2000 to 2100 would be dominated by non climate change factors by
at least three to one (relative to warming). They also show that climate change may not increase
the net water stressed population through 2100 (relative to no climate change). Similarly, even
after mitigation to limit the average global temperature increase to 2C, the net water stressed population may be higher relative
to the no climate change case. Equally importantly, mitigation may actually increase the net water stressed
population over the unmitigated climate change scenario.

Adaptation
Adaptation solves empirics prove.
Goklany 12 science and technology policy analyst for the US Department of the Interior, Assistant Director of Programs,
Science, and Technology Policy, represented the US at the IPCC, rapporteur for the Resource Use and Management Subgroup of
Working Group III of the IPCC First Assessment Report, PhD in electrical engineering (Indur M., Is Climate Change the Number One
Threat to Humanity? 8/28/12; http://goklany.org/library/Goklany_WIREs.pdf)//Beddow
Greater economic development, i.e., net GDP per capita, should translate into higher adaptive
capacity because an increase in economic resources ought to increase access to both the
technologies and the human capital needed to cope with change, whether that change is due to
global warming or any other agency. 41,48 In addition, several factors that advance human capitale.g., educational
attainment, improved health, expenditures for health and research 49 are also correlated with increases with GDP per capita.
41,48 This may partly be due to the fact economic development and human capital reinforce each
other and partly because factors that enhance one also enhance the other. 41,48 Moreover, if
existing technologies are inadequate for coping with change, wealthier societies have a
greater capacity to research, develop, and deploy needed new technologies. A case in point is
the worlds response to HIV/AIDS. Once a mysterious new disease that spelled almost certain death for its victims, it is
now a disease that is manageable, particularly in the wealthier world. The effort to tame this
disease was spearheaded by, and accomplished at considerable cost to, the wealthier nations,
who then have made the fruits of this exercise available to poorer countries (Ref. 43, p. 21; Ref. 48, pp.
6768). Arguably, this was enabled by the greater wealth and human capital available to the wealthier countries. This would be
consistent with the notion that wealthier societies are more resilient to adversity in general. Another important factor contributing
to adaptive capacity that is often ignored in impact assessments is, as noted, secular technological change (Ref. 33, Chapter 17; Refs
9, 41, 43). Long term projections that neglect economic development and secular technological
change generally overstate future negative impacts on critical aspects of human well being,
often by an order of magnitude or more. 43,48 For example, the FTAs malaria study assumed static adaptive
capacity between baseline and projection years (19902085). 19 Applying the same assumption to project U.S. deaths in 1970 from
various water related diseasesdysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, other gastrointestinal disease, malariausing data from 1900
implies freezing death rates at 1900 levels. But, in fact, from 19001970 they declined by 99.6%100.0%. 43 Similarly, because of the
increase in adaptive capacity globally, global death rates from extreme weather events have declined by 98% since the 1920s. 50
Simplistic projections that do not fully account for economic and technological development are the major reason why highly
publicized projections from The Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb , for instance, failed the reality test. 43,48



Adaption solves - new methods
Vermeulen and Challinor 13(Dr Sonja Vermeulen is the Head of Research for the CGIAR Research Program on
Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Dr Andy Challinor is a professor at the Institute for Climate and Atmosphere
Science, School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, and co-leads research on climate adaptation in CCAFS. How
farmers can adapt to a warming world
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/20136585711493753.html)
In these examples, countries have made progress on climate-resilient agriculture by focusing
on what is known rather than what remains unclear. Computer models can be used to
estimate climate impacts on a range of timescales. Models can predict areas of crop failure in
West Africa a few months ahead of the harvest, for example. On longer timescales, models show that
northeast Chinas wheat-growing regions will need more heat-tolerant crops within a few decades. This kind of knowledge
helps us select adaptation strategies with confidence despite many remaining uncertainties
about the future. It is not just heat stress that is important. Low-lying coastal rice-growing
regions should prepare for more saline conditions fed by a rise in sea level. Areas plagued by drought
should sustainably tap their groundwater rather than deplete it. In parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, for
example, maize farmers could switch to sorghum and other less water-intensive crops where
groundwater depletion has made irrigation more difficult. Scientists are learning to
communicate climate predictions and uncertainties in ways that are more useful to planners
and policymakers. It is more helpful to say when a particular change is likely to happen - starting sometime between 2020
and 2040, there wont be enough rain here to grow vegetables without irrigation - than to give a string of probabilities linked to
distant futures. All of society - especially farmers - needs to know when specific changes are needed. As the amount of greenhouse
gases in our atmosphere continues to increase, the effects of climate change on agriculture will become increasingly visible. It is
urgent to adjust or even transform agriculture even if our knowledge is incomplete. The science of adaptation has
matured enough for us to make robust adaptation plans based on what we do know. It is time
to embrace and deploy this science and start figuring out how we will feed ourselves in the
future.

Alt Cause
Developing countries are the largest emitters of CO2
Lefeber 8/24/2012 (Rene DOCTOR CHAIR IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Polar Warming: An Opportune
Inconveniencehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151241

The single biggest environmental threat for the Polar Regions, however, is global warming.
Global warming is addressed by the international community through the regulation of the
concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that have an anthropogenic origin
(mitigation).91 The temperature in the Polar Regions rises faster than anywhere else on Earth.
The causes are not yet fully understood, but it is presumed that specific regional features, such
as the observed decrease in the power of snow and ice to reflect sunlight (albedo effect),
contribute significantly to the relative fast rise of the temperature. This is caused, amongst
others, by the deposit of smut in the Polar Regions which was released into the atmosphere
by the emission of black carbon (or soot). Developing countries are the main source of
emissions of black carbon in the 21st century. The emissions of industrialized countries have
been significantly reduced in the second halve of the last century. Public health considerations
were the main reason for the implementation of various measures, such as the use of catalysts
in cars, to achieve emission reductions of black carbon. Black carbon is a greenhouse gas under
the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Climate Change
Convention), but it is not subject to the emission targets of the Kyoto Protocol to that
Convention (Art. 3.1 and Annex A). Furthermore, developing countries are not subject to the
Kyoto Protocol emission targets even though these countries are now the main source of
contemporary emissions of this greenhouse gas

Disasters
UN report confirms warming doesnt cause extreme weather.
Michaels 4/18 Director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute and senior fellow in research and
economic development at George Mason University (Patrick J., The Climate Horror Picture Show, Brought to You by Dodgy
Science, 4/18/13; http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/climate-horror-picture-show-brought-you-dodgy-
science)//Beddow
Pop quiz. Who wrote this: There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in
normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change? a)
Someone who does not know how to write b) The Koch Brothers c) The Cato Institute d) The United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Well, its obviously a, and not likely to be b, as Charles Koch writes very clearly. Nor would such a
poorly constructed sentence have gotten by the Cato editors (c). Which leaves d. Thats right, its in a recent report on
climate extremes from our pals at the UN . Of course they couldnt come right out and say it,
so its up to others to translate to common English: any trends in weather-related losses are not
related to dreaded global warming. But that hasnt stopped the $3.5 billion per year U.S. Global Change Research
Program (USGCRP). Instead, their draft National Assessment of climate change in the United States flogs more extreme climate
in just about every one of the 30 chapters in this 1200-page doorstop. The USGCRP is just about every organization that consumes
an oodle of the multibillion dollar pie. It therefore considers its pronouncements to be the consensus of climate scientists. So does
the IPCC. They cant both be right. One thing thats apparent in the new Assessment is that federal funding is awarded preferentially
to those who thrive in a data-free environment. Weather-related damages are not increasing, as percentage of GDP. When you
produce more stuff (increasing GDP), theres more stuff to get hit by bad weather. The Transportation chapter of this climate
horror picture show asserts that pernicious climate change is reducing the reliability and capacity of the U.S. transportation
system. Really? But, here is reality: Does this look like reduction in capacity? Does this? Or is this related to global warming? The
fact of the matter is the vast balance of evidence is that the current National Assessment is an
incredible exaggeration of the effects of climate change on the United States. So why was it done?
Consider the mission statement of the USGCRP: Thirteen Agencies, One Mission: Empower the Nation with Global Change
Science. The operative word is empower, which is the purpose of the Assessment. It is to provide cover for a massive regulatory
intrusion, and concomitant enormous costs in resources and individual liberty. History tells us that when scientists willingly endorse
sweeping governmental agendas fueled by dodgy science, bad things soon happen.

Irreversible

Were already passed the tipping point its irreversible.
McPherson 12 Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Arizona (Guy
R., Were Done, 6/22/12; http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/item/8363-guy-mcpherson-
were-done)//Beddow
As I pointed out in this space a few years ago, I concluded in 2002 that we had set into motion climate-change
processes likely to cause our own extinction by 2030. I mourned for months, to the bewilderment of the three
people who noticed. And then, shortly thereafter, I was elated to learn about a hail-Mary pass that just might allow our persistence
for a few more generations: Peak oil and its economic consequences might bring the industrial economy to an overdue close, just in
time. Like Pandora with her vessel, I retained hope. No more. Stick a fork in us. Were done, broiled beyond We're Donewishful
thinking. It seems weve experienced a lethal combination of too much cheap oil and too little
wisdom. Yet again, Ive begun mourning. Its no easier the second time. As always, Im open to alternative views in fact, Im
begging for them, considering the gravity of this particular situation but the supporting evidence will have to be extraordinary. By
the way, irrationally invoking Al Gore doesnt count as evidence. Ditto for unsubstantiated rumors about global cooling. A small
dose of critical thinking might be required, rather than the ability to repeat lines touted by neo-
conservatives and their owners in the fossil-fuel industries. Before you launch into the ridicule Ive come to
expect from those who comment anonymously from a position of hubris and ignorance in the blogosphere, I invite you to fully
consider the information below. I recommend setting aside normalcy bias and wishful thinking as you peruse the remainder of this
brief essay. (While youre at it, go ahead and look up the word peruse. It probably doesnt mean what you think it means. Ill make
it easy: Heres a link to the definition.) We know Earths temperature is nearly one degree Centigrade higher
than it was at the beginning of the industrial revolution. And 1 C is catastrophic, as indicated by a
decades-old cover-up. Already, weve triggered several positive feedbacks, none of which were
expected to occur by mainstream scientists until we reached 2 C above baseline global average
temperature. We also know that the situation is far worse than indicated by recent data and models
(which are reviewed in the following paragraphs). Weve known for more than a decade what happens when the planes stop flying:
Because particulates were removed when airplanes were grounded, Earth warmed by more than 1 C in the three days following 11
September 2001. In other words, Earths temperature is already about 2 C higher than the industrial-revolution baseline. And
because of positive feedbacks, 2 C leads directly and rapidly to 6 C, acidification-induced death
of the worlds oceans, and the near-term demise of Homo sapiens. We cant live without life-
filled oceans, home to the tiny organisms that generate half the planets oxygen while
comprising the base of the global food chain (contrary to the common belief that Wal-Mart forms the base of the
food chain). So much for the wisdom of the self-proclaimed wise ape. With completion of the on-going demise of the industrial
economy, were there: Weve crossed the horrifically dire 2 C rubicon, as will be obvious when most of
the worlds planes are grounded. Without completion of the on-going demise of the industrial economy, were there:
Weve crossed the horrifically dire 2 C rubicon, as described below. Joseph Heller, anybody? Ive detailed the increasingly dire
assessments. And Ive explained how weve pulled the trigger on five positive-feedback events at lower
global average temperature than expected, while also pointing out that any one of these five
phenomena likely leads to near-term human extinction. None of these positive-feedback events were expected
by scientists until we exceed 2 C warming above the pre-industrial baseline. My previous efforts were absurdly
optimistic, as demonstrated by frequent updates (for example, here, here, and here, in chronological order). Yet my frequent
writing, rooted in scientific analyses, can barely keep up with increasingly terrifying information about climate change. Every day,
we have more reliable knowledge about the abyss into which we have plunged. Consider, for example,
the International Energy Agencys forecast of business-as-usual leading to a 6 C warmer planet
by 2035. Malcolm Light, writing for the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, considers one of the many positive feedbacks weve
triggered in one planetary region and reaches this conclusion: This process of methane release will accelerate
exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise
of all life on earth before the middle of this century. Please read that sentence again. Light is a retired earth-
systems scientist. As nearly as I can distinguish, he has no hidden agenda, though he believes geo-engineering will save us
(an approach that would take several years to implement, and one that wed almost certainly FUBAR).
Forecasts by the International Energy Agency and the Arctic Methane Emergency group match the recent trend of increasingly dire
assessments based on collection and interpretation of more data and increasingly powerful models. If these forecasts are
close to accurate, weve only a requiem to write for human beings on Earth. Its time to modify
Keynes famous line thusly: In the short run, were all dead. For those of us living in the interior of a large
continent, much less on a rock-pile in the desert, Id give us until 2020 at the latest. Carpe diem, reveling in the one life
we get.


Warming is irreversible.
Whitaker 12 Examiner reporter, citing study by the American Meteorological Society (Sterling, New Report Calls Global
Warming Irreversible, predicts global collapse, 8/29/12; < http://www.examiner.com/article/new-report-calls-global-warming-
irreversible-predicts-global-collapse>)//Beddow
Global warming has become irreversible, according to a new report from the American Meteorological Society. EIN
Newswire reports that the AMS made the startling finding in an information report published on August 20, 2012. The report finds
that even if governments, corporations and individuals cut their green house gas emissions
drastically today, it would still be too late to head off a coming global disaster. Those findings echo
the claims made in the 1972 report 'Limits to Growth,' in which a team of MIT researchers entered a variety of different economic
and environmental scenarios into a computer model. Most of those scenarios indicated that without significant limits to human
consumption patterns, the result would be a complete global economic collapse by 2030. The 1972 report also stated that to avoid
the predicted consequences, drastic changes were required to protect the environment. In the ensuing decades the
environmental outlook has continued to worsen, human consumption has grown and the
population of the world has exploded.


Warming inevitable-even if emissions cut to zero
Maharjan 13 (Keshav Dr. of Agricultural Economics Methodologies to Assess the Impact of
Climate Change in Agriculture www.springer.com)

Since the initial assessment of response to different controlled variables is based on the
controlled experiment, such models have limitations of Isolation from the variety and
variability of factors and conditions that affect production at the field condition (Adams et al.
1998). Thus, these types of models have limitation on prop erly understanding the effects of
a wide range of variables associated with global warming (Schlenker and Roberts 2008). In
addition, though it is unequivocal that global warming is inevitable in the coming century,
even if emissions of greenhouse gases is stabilized at current level, there exists debate and
uncertainty on the extent of warming as well as other related changes (IPCC 2007; Rosegrant et
al. 2008). Similarly. due to huge cost involved in installing the experiment setup. application of
such models in the case of developing countries is very limited.



Feedbacks
Empirics prove negative feedbacks check warming.
Evans 12 consultant of the Australian Greenhouse Office/Department of Climate Change, main modeler of carbon in Australias
biosphere 1999-2005, mathematician, engineer with 6 university degrees, Ph.D. from Stanford in electrical engineering (David. M.
W., The Skeptics Case, 2/24/12; < https://mises.org/daily/5892/The-Skeptics-Case>)//Beddow
The serious skeptical scientists have always agreed with the government climate scientists about the direct effect of CO2. The
argument is entirely about the feedbacks. The feedbacks dampen or reduce the direct effect of
the extra CO2, cutting it roughly in half.[5] The main feedbacks involve evaporation, water
vapor, and clouds. In particular, water vapor condenses into clouds, so extra water vapor due to
the direct warming effect of extra CO2 will cause extra clouds, which reflect sunlight back out to
space and cool the earth, thereby reducing the overall warming. There are literally thousands of
feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct-warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived
system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by
amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a
microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth's climate is long-lived and stable it has never gone
into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus which strongly suggests that the feedbacks
dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2. The climate models have been
essentially the same for 30 years now, maintaining roughly the same sensitivity to extra CO2 even while they got more detailed with
more computer power. How well have the climate models predicted the temperature? Does the data better support the climate
models or the skeptic's view? One of the earliest and most important predictions was presented to the US Congress in 1988 by Dr
James Hansen, the "father of global warming": Hansen's climate model clearly exaggerated future temperature
rises. In particular, his climate model predicted that if human CO2 emissions were cut back drastically starting in 1988, such that by
year 2000 the CO2 level was not rising at all, we would get his scenario C. But in reality the temperature did not even
rise this much, even though our CO2 emissions strongly increased which suggests that the
climate models greatly overestimate the effect of CO2 emissions. A more considered prediction by the
climate models was made in 1990 in the IPCC's First Assessment Report:[8] It's 20 years now, and the average rate of
increase in reality is below the lowest trend in the range predicted by the IPCC. Ocean Temperatures
The oceans hold the vast bulk of the heat in the climate system. We've only been measuring ocean temperature properly since mid-
2003, when the Argo system became operational.[9][10] In Argo, a buoy duck dives down to a depth of 2,000 meters, measures
temperatures as it very slowly ascends, then radios the results back to headquarters via satellite. Over 3,000 Argo buoys constantly
patrol all the oceans of the world. The ocean temperature has been basically flat since we started
measuring it properly, and not warming as quickly as the climate models predict. The climate models
predict a particular pattern of atmospheric warming during periods of global warming; the most prominent change they predict is a
warming in the tropics about 10 km up, the "hotspot." The hotspot is the sign of the amplification in their theory (see figure 1). The
theory says the hotspot is caused by extra evaporation, and by extra water vapor pushing the warmer, wetter lower troposphere up
into volume previously occupied by cool dry air. The presence of a hotspot would indicate amplification is occurring, and vice versa.
We have been measuring atmospheric temperatures with weather balloons since the 1960s. Millions of weather balloons have built
up a good picture of atmospheric temperatures over the last few decades, including the warming period from the late 1970s to the
late '90s. This important and pivotal data was not released publicly by the climate establishment until 2006, and then in an obscure
place.[13] Here it is: In reality there was no hotspot, not even a small one. So in reality there is no
amplification the amplification shown in figure 1 does not exist.[16] The climate models predict that
when the surface of the earth warms, less heat is radiated from the earth into space (on a weekly or monthly time scale). This is
because, according to the theory, the warmer surface causes more evaporation and thus there is more heat-trapping water vapor.
This is the heat-trapping mechanism that is responsible for the assumed amplification in figure 1. Satellites have been measuring the
radiation emitted from the earth for the last two decades. A major study has linked the changes in temperature on the earth's
surface with the changes in the outgoing radiation. Here are the results: This shows that in reality the earth gives off
more heat when its surface is warmer. This is the opposite of what the climate models predict.
This shows that the climate models trap heat too aggressively, and that their assumed
amplification shown in figure 1 does not exist. All the data here is impeccably sourced
satellites, Argo, and weather balloons.[18] The air and ocean temperature data shows that the climate models
overestimate temperature rises. The climate establishment suggest that cooling due to undetected
aerosols might be responsible for the failure of the models to date, but this excuse is wearing thin it
continues not to warm as much as they said it would, or in the way they said it would. On the other hand, the rise in air temperature
has been greater than the skeptics say could be due to CO2. The skeptic's excuse is that the rise is mainly due to
other forces and they point out that the world has been in a fairly steady warming trend of
0.5C per century since 1680 (with alternating ~30 year periods of warming and mild cooling)
where as the vast bulk of all human CO2 emissions have been after 1945. We've checked all the main
predictions of the climate models against the best data: Test Climate Models Air temperatures from 1988 Overestimated rise, even if
CO2 is drastically cut Air temperatures from 1990 Overestimated trend rise Ocean temperatures from 2003 Overestimated trend rise
greatly Atmospheric hotspot Completely missing no amplification Outgoing radiation Opposite to reality no amplification The
climate models get them all wrong. The missing hotspot and outgoing radiation data both,
independently, prove that the amplification in the climate models is not present. Without the
amplification, the climate model temperature predictions would be cut by at least two-thirds,
which would explain why they overestimated the recent air and ocean temperature increases.
Therefore, The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks
does not in fact exist. The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three. The
skeptical view is compatible with the data. The data presented here is impeccably sourced, very relevant, publicly available, and
from our best instruments. Yet it never appears in the mainstream media have you ever seen anything like any of the figures here
in the mainstream media? That alone tells you that the "debate" is about politics and power, and not about science or truth. This is
an unusual political issue, because there is a right and a wrong answer, and everyone will know which it is eventually. People are
going ahead and emitting CO2 anyway, so we are doing the experiment: either the world heats up by several degrees by 2050 or so,
or it doesn't. Notice that the skeptics agree with the government climate scientists about the direct
effect of CO2; they just disagree about the feedbacks. The climate debate is all about the feedbacks; everything
else is merely a sideshow. Yet hardly anyone knows that. The government climate scientists and the mainstream media have framed
the debate in terms of the direct effect of CO2 and sideshows such as arctic ice, bad weather, or psychology. They almost never
mention the feedbacks. Why is that? Who has the power to make that happen?

AT: Climate Wars
Climate wars dont escalate
Weber 06 (ELKE U. WEBER Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia
University EXPERIENCE-BASED AND DESCRIPTION-BASED PERCEPTIONS OF LONG-TERM RISK:
WHY GLOBAL WARMING DOES NOT SCARE US (YET))

It should come as no surprise that the governments and citizenries of many countries show
little concern about climate change and its consequences. Behavioral decision research over
the last 30 years provides a series of lessons about the importance of affect in perceptions of
risk and in decisions to take actions that reduce or manage perceived risks. Evidence from a
range of domains suggests that worry drives risk management decisions. When people fail to
be alarmed about a risk or hazard, they do not take precautions. Recent personal experience
strongly inuences the evaluation of a risky option. Low-probability events generate less
concern than their probability warrants on average, but more concern than they deserve in
those rare instances when they do occur. Personal experience with noticeable and serious
consequences of global warming is still rare in many regions of the world. When people base
their decisions on statistical descriptions about a hazard provided by others, characteristics of
the hazard identied as psychological risk dimensions predict differences in alarm or worry
across different classes of risk. The time-delayed, abstract, and often statistical nature of the
risks of global warming does not evoke strong visceral reactions. These results suggest that
we should nd ways to evoke visceral reactions towards the risk of global warming, perhaps by
simulations of its concrete future consequences for peoples home or other regions they visit or
value. Increased concern about global warming needs to solicited carefully, however, to
prevent a decrease in concern about other relevant risks. The generation of worry or concern
about global warming may be a necessary but not sufcient condition for desirable or
appropriate protective or mitigating behavior on part of the general public. their public
ofcials show so much less concern about global warming than climate
scientists.

No Impact
Warmings not an existential risk adaptation, mitigation, geoengineering, and
empirically no runaway.
Muller 12 writer on ethics and existential risks (Jonatas, Analysis of Existential Risks, 2012; <
http://www.jonatasmuller.com/x-risks.pdf>)//Beddow
A runaway global warming, one in which the temperature rises could be a self- reinforcing
process, has been cited as an existential risk. Predictions show that the Arctic ice could melt completely within a
few years, releasing methane currently trapped in the sea bed (Walter et al. 2007). Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas
than carbon dioxide. Abrupt methane releases from frozen regions may have been involved in two extinction events on this planet,
55 million years ago in the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, and 251 million years ago in the PermianTriassic extinction
event. The fact that similar global warmings have happened before in the history of our planet is
a likely indication that the present global warming would not be of a runaway nature.
Theoretical ways exist to reverse global warmings with technology, which may include
capturing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, deflecting solar radiation, among other
strategies. For instance, organisms such as algae are being bioengineered to convert atmospheric greenhouse gases into biofuels
(Venter 2008). Though they may cause imbalances, these methods would seem to prevent global
warming from being an existential risk in the worst case scenario, but it may still produce
catastrophic results.



Warming is not an existential risk empirics.
Maslin et al 11 Professor at Department of Geography at University College of London (Mark, Global health and climate
change: moving from denial and catastrophic fatalism to positive action, 2011;
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1942/1866.full.pdf+html)//Beddow
Some people have even suggested that human extinction may not be a remote risk [1719].
Sherwood & Huber [7] point to continued heating effects that could make the world largely
uninhabitable by humans and mammals within 300 years. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wet-bulb
temperature (used because it reflects both the ambient temperature and relative humidity of the site), is surprisingly similar across
diverse climates and never exceeds 31 C. They suggest that if it rose to 35 C, which never happens now but would at a warming of
7 C, hyperthermia in humans and other mammals would occur as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible, therefore
making many environments uninhabitable. However, these studies do not take account of geological
reconstructions. We know that during the Eocene some 50 million years ago global temperature was at least 5 C higher than
today, with forests on Antarctica and rainforest extending as far north as Canada and as far south as Patagonia [20]. Some scientists
argue that this was the golden age of life, as there could have been at least twice as much living biomass on the Earth as today. At
the beginning of this period, there was an extreme period of global warming called the PaleoceneEocene
thermal maximum when global temperatures were at least another 5 C warmer * 21 , 22 +. This
did lead to some extinction in the oceans but it was not the end of life on the planet nor did
mammals suffer mass extinctions. So, while history suggests that imminent catastrophe is as
false as climate change denial, it could be as big a threat to action. Catastrophic speculation,
especially when based on limited evidence and without specific time frames, may induce an
unnecessary sense of fatalism and helplessness when, in the shorter term, there is a huge scope
for positive action


Even the IPCC thinks this is absurd the effects of warming will be minor.
Friedman 7/5 Milton Friedmans son, PhD in theoretical physicist, economist, legal theorist, professor of law at Santa Clara
University, contributor to Liberty Magazine, verifiable genius (David, Does Climate Catastrophe Pass the Giggle Test? 7/5/09; <
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2009/07/does-climate-catastrophe-pass-giggle.html>)//Beddow
What I find unconvincing is the second half of the argument. More precisely, I find unconvincing the claim that
climate change on the scale suggested by the results of the IPCC models would have
catastrophic consequences for humans. Obviously one can imagine climate change large enough and fast enough to
be a very serious problema rapid end of the current interglacial, for example. And if, as I believe is the case, climate is not very
well understood, one cannot absolutely rule out such changes. But most of the argument is put in terms not of what might
conceivably happen but of what we have good reason to expect to happen, and I think the outer
bound of that is provided by the IPCC models. They suggest a temperature increase of about two degrees
centigrade over the next hundred years, resulting in a sea level rise of about a foot and a half. What I find implausible is
the claim that changes on that scale at that speed would be catastrophicsufficiently so to
justify very expensive measures now to prevent them. Human beings, after all, currently live,
work, grow food in a much wider range of climates than that. Glancing over a U.S. climate map, it looks as
though all of the places I have lived are within an hour or two drive of other places with an average temperature at least two
degrees centigrade higher. If people can currently live, work, grow crops over a temperature range of
much more than two degrees, it is hard to imagine any reason why most of them couldn't
continue to do so, about as easily, if average temperature shifted up by that amountespecially
if they had a century to adjust to the change. That observation raises the question with which I titled this post:
Does climate change catastrophe pass the giggle test ? Is the claim that climate change of that
scale would have catastrophic consequences one that any reasonable person could take
seriously?

CO2 Good
Laundry List
Warming solves ice age, resources, agriculture, econ and disease AND
adaptation mitigates the worst impacts.
Que 06 Stanford-educated electrical engineer (Simon, The Bright Side of Global Warming, 6/29/06; <
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/06/simon-que/the-bright-side-of-global-warming/>)//Beddow
Despite all the doomsday reports from environmentalists about global warming, there is reason
to rejoice if the earth does get warmer. In his Anti-Environmentalist Manifesto, Lew Rockwell writes: "There is no
evidence of global warming, but even if it were to take place, many scientists say the effect would be good: it would
lengthen growing seasons, make the earth more liveable, and forestall any future ice age."
Many researchers have studied and documented the bright side of a warming world climate trend. Thomas Gale Moore, an
economist at Stanford University's Hoover Institute, is the author of Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry about Global
Warming, a book that describes the many ways that warmer weather helps human beings in all areas of life. And Moore is not alone
in taking this view. Many researchers have discovered the gains that human society makes in warmer
weather by studying its impact in various areas such as health and agriculture. Perhaps the most
direct and obvious benefit of warmer climate is its impact on human mortality rates. Both extreme
heat and extreme coldness bring the risk of death. Statistically and historically in the West, however, winters have posed a greater
threat to humans than summers have. According to William. R. Keatinge and Gavin. C. Donaldson, two researchers at the University
of London, "Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all
countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold." One of their studies of
various regions of Europe showed that cold-related deaths outnumbered heat-related deaths by nearly ten to one. Sherwood B.
Idso, Craig D. Idso, and Keith E. Idso, researchers at the Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change in Tempe, AZ, agree. They
point out that in both cold and warm countries, the risk of both cardiovascular and respiratory diseases is higher in the winter
months. Some have suggested that in warmer weather, mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria may increase as the climate
becomes more favorable to mosquito life. Historically, in England, malaria made a significant contribution to human deaths during a
cold period, and declined as temperatures rose during the 19th century. The same can be said of yellow fever, dengue, and tick-
borne encephalitis. Other studies show that there is either no connection between climate change and
incidence of these diseases, or that they decrease in warmer weather. The Idsos provide an explanation
for this counterintuitive finding. They suggest that human-dependent "factors such as the quality of public
health services, irrigation and agricultural activities, land uses practices," etc., have a far greater
impact on reducing vector-borne diseases. Draining wetlands for development, for example, eliminates potential
mosquito breeding grounds. Warmer weather is conducive to many of these activities. A warmer world
would also directly impact agricultural productivity, according to Moore. Warmer weather means a
longer growing season, and thus greater output. It would also result in greater rainfall, providing
much-needed water for plants. The risk of crop failures would decrease with shorter, milder
winters. As a result of elevated levels of carbon dioxide, the quality and quantity of agricultural
products have risen as well. Given the significant role that agriculture plays in feeding people around the world, this is a
huge benefit. Even if people do not consume more grown food, they still benefit from the drop in prices that accompanies an
expansion of supply. High carbon dioxide levels from industrial output, the alleged culprit behind global warming, also improve the
quality of certain plants. For example, many types of plants contain antioxidants, substances that protect the body against
destructive molecular radicals. In many plants, the concentration of antioxidants such as vitamin C increases significantly under
higher levels of carbon dioxide. The Idsos report their findings in their article. Given the medical properties of these substances,
greater CO2 levels are a very important health benefit. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has studied chemistry and
plant biology. As part of photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide and transform it into organic compounds. These compounds
are what give the plant its mass, nutritional value, and other beneficial properties. As college freshmen learn in chemistry class, the
rate of many chemical processes is proportional to the concentration of the inputs. A greater concentration of carbon dioxide results
in a greater rate of turnover, as more carbon dioxide is converted into plant matter in a given time span. Consequently, plants grown
under increased CO2 levels contain more biomass and nutrition. Warming climates are advantageous to other
forms of human activity as well. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), a study prepared
by the Arctic Council, found that a warmer Arctic would have more available resources. By
reducing the polar ice caps, Arctic warming opens up resources that were trapped by ice to
human exploration and use. In light of recent gas prices, one especially important advantage is
increased access to oil deposits in the Arctic. Transportation also benefits from more clement weather. Heavy rain
and snow during the winter disrupt both ground and air transportation, resulting in costly delays and hazardous conditions. The ACIA
has also found that reduced ice caps would open up sea routes through the arctic. Currently, many freighters must take the Panama
Canal to reach the other side of North America. (The ones that cannot fit in the canal must go around South America!) A
shortened route through the Arctic would cause shipping costs to plummet, benefiting a
multitude of industries that depend on carrying goods between continents. The fishing industry stands
to benefit as well. Moore notes a study that found that in a cooler world, fish, shellfish, and crustacean catches would decline.
Turning this analysis around, he concludes that warmer climate would boost fishery productivity. The ACIA report
agrees, citing the prospect of more productive fisheries in the Arctic due to the northward migration of cod and capelin, made
possible by warmer weather. On land, improved weather conditions would benefit traffic as well. Currently, winter storms are one
of the biggest factors in causing traffic problems and delays. They create unsafe driving conditions. They force airports to postpone
flights. If winters became shorter due to warming trends, road and airport conditions would improve massively. A warming
trend brings many benefits to economic activity. Since so many people around the world are
dependent on oil, fish, transportation, and shipping, the economic advantages of warmer
climate reach far and wide. As the supply of these goods rises along with temperatures, prices would fall, allowing
consumers to enjoy more without paying more. History shows that warmer weather has always been on the
side of human civilization. Moore describes the role that the climate has played in primitive societies: "Primitive man and
hunter-gatherer tribes were at the mercy of the weather, as are societies that are still almost totally bound to the soil. A series of
bad years can be devastating." In warm years, the growing season was long and fruitful. Animals flourished, providing food for
societies that relied on hunting. Disruptions in climate would have greatly reduced their means of sustenance. In fact, climate
changes may have played a key role in the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to farming societies. Moore points to the
coincidence of the end of the Ice Age with the rise of agriculture and domestication about 10,000 years ago. As a
result, populations that grew food could grow larger and larger without being constrained by a limited supply of wildlife. According
to Moore's book, there was little population growth in Europe during the late first millennium A.D. Mountain passes restricted trade
and movement, and many settlements were abandoned. When the warmer 11th century came, towns grew and trade flourished.
Marshes dried up to yield good farmland. Human life expectancy in England reached 48 by the year 1276. In Greenland, settlers even
grew corn it was truly a "green land." This trend of warmth reversed itself starting around 1300, ushering in a Mini-Ice Age.
Glaciers in North America expanded. The once-flourishing civilization in Greenland was abandoned. Europe experienced crop failures
due to a shortened growing season. The coldness generated storms and turned good land into bogs and marshes. Moore believes
that this cooling period even contributed to the Black Death plague. "The unpleasant weather is likely to
have confined people to their homes where they were more likely to be exposed to the fleas that carried the disease," he says. "In
addition, the inclement weather may have induced rats to take shelter in buildings, exposing their inhabitants to the bacillus." As a
result, life expectancy in Britain plummeted to 38 by the late 14th century. He documents similar historical trends in Asia. Human
civilization prospered during periods of warm weather in history and faced hardships and
setbacks during cold periods. Says Moore, "During the best of times, human populations have gone up rapidly, new
techniques and practices have developed, and building and art have flourished." Although the Industrial Revolution has reduced the
dependence of human activity upon the climate, warmer weather still makes a difference today. Despite all the
benefits, many scientists still claim global warming is a problem. Some of their concerns may be valid, such as the possible flooding
of small islands. The question is, how can we weigh the gains against the losses? How should global warming be judged when it
could be both advantageous and disadvantageous for people? Here is where the realm of science ends. Science can tell us
the bare facts about what will happen as a result of natural, physical processes. However, it
cannot tell us how people will or should act in response to these processes. According to Thomas Gale
Moore in an interview, global warming is not so much a scientific issue as an economic issue. People
are fully capable of adjusting to new conditions just as they have done for thousands of
years. A farmer who finds that his crops can no longer grow under the new climate, for instance, could either move south or find a
more suitable crop. The result of human adaptability can be seen today in the fact that people today can live in both extreme heat
and extreme cold due to good insulation and air conditioning. "That's the interesting thing about human beings," says Moore. If it
turns out to be true, global warming may change the world in many ways. But as long as people are capable of
acting and adjusting, they can compensate for the negative effects of warming while enjoying
its positive fruits. Moore agrees: "There's no reason to think that warm weather is bad."

Greenland Econ
Warming key to Greenland econ
Ernst & Youngs 13 (Ernst & Youngs is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London. Arctic oil
and gas)
http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Arctic_oil_and_gas/$FILE/Arctic_oil_and_gas.pdf
Sparsely populated Greenland is in some ways an oddity. Geographically, it is part of the North American continent, but
geopolitically, it is part of Europe. Nationally, Greenland is part of Denmark, but is a self-governing colony following 300 years of
Danish rule. The Government of Greenland encourages oil development because it is keen to
find another source of income outside of fishing and wants to reduce its reliance on subsidies
from Denmark. A fully fledged oil industry could lead to full independence from Denmark,
as well as economic development. Oil exploration in Greenland dates back to the late 1970s,
but six test drillings in 1976, 1977 and 1990 failed to prove the potential for profitable
exploitation, and the high cost of accessing reserves in waters and land that are icebound for
most of the year deterred investors. But the potential for profitable exploitation changed in
the summer of 2010 when British independent oil company Cairn Energy discovered
hydrocarbons in Greenland for the first time. Following the Cairn discovery, in November 2010, Greenland
awarded its first offshore oil and gas exploration licenses to oil companies, opening up this Arctic frontier to future oil and gas
production. While the Greenlandic Government welcomed the Cairn discovery and the results of its first licensing round,
Greenpeace, the international environmental group, embarked upon an aggressive campaign to stop any more exploration in the
area dubbed Iceberg Alley. 7 Cairn has interests in eight offshore areas spanning more than 85,000 square kilometers and had
budgeted US$1 billion for its eight-well drilling campaign spread over 201011. But drilling results have been disappointing, with
some hydrocarbon shows across multiple basins, but no commercial discoveries. Cairn is evaluating its next steps, while other
existing acreage-holders, Shell and Statoil, are expected to ramp up their exploration activity in 201213. Statoil notably bought
into Cairns Pitu license in late 2011. While disappointed with the Cairn results, the Government has
already planned a second licensing round. In 2013, blocks will be offered in the Greenland
Sea and offshore northeast Greenland.

Canada Econ
Warming key to Canada econ
Ernst & Youngs 13 (Ernst & Youngs is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London. Arctic oil
and gas)
http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Arctic_oil_and_gas/$FILE/Arctic_oil_and_gas.pdf
Canadian geologists long believed that the Arctic north had significant potential for
petroleum discoveries. In 1967, a partnership between government and industry resulted in the formation of Panarctic
Oils Ltd., and in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Canadian government invested in Arctic oil and gas
exploration. Important discoveries were made in the Mackenzie Delta region, the Beaufort Sea Basin and in the Arctic
islands. Exploration drilling in Canadas Arctic offshore began in 1972, and since then,
approximately 90 wells have been drilled in the Beaufort Sea. In addition, 34 offshore wells
have been drilled in Nunavuts High Arctic Islands, and another three wells have been drilled
in the Eastern Arctic offshore. Most of this activity occurred in the 1970s and 1980s when a
combination of increases in fuel prices and federal incentives made the Arctic an attractive
place for companies to invest in exploration.5 Changes in market conditions for oil and gas, the end of
government exploration incentives and the absence of infrastructure to ship oil and gas to markets, resulted in the withdrawal of
companies from exploration drilling in the Arctic offshore during the 1990s. Since 1991, when the National Energy Board (NEB)
took over the regulation of oil and gas exploration and production activities in this area, the only offshore well that has been
drilled in Canadas Arctic was the Devon Paktoa C-60 exploration well. It was drilled in the Beaufort Sea during the winter of
200506 and was abandoned in March 2006. Exploration interest in the Canadian Arctic offshore has increased in recent years.
Six significant discovery licenses were issued in 2007 and 2008 to three companies exploring in the Beaufort Sea, and there has
also been an increase in the number of active exploration licenses issued in the Mackenzie Delta-Beaufort Sea region. However,
the NEB noted in its December 2011 report, there is currently no offshore drilling in Canadas Arctic, nor are there applications
for drilling before the board, although a number of companies hold exploration licenses for areas in the Beaufort Sea.6 Following
a regulatory update on oil and gas drilling regulation in the Canadian part of the Arctic Beaufort Sea, industry heavyweights
Chevron and Statoil have joined forces to explore leases in the area this year. Chevron, previously the sole leaseholder, has
farmed out a 40% stake to Statoil for an undisclosed amount but will remain the operator. The companies plan to launch a 3D
seismic program for a 2,060-square-kilometer area on the back of strong confidence in significant resources being buried under
Canadas Arctic ice and recent clarification on drilling safety regulation in the region.

Russian Econ
Warming key to Russian econ
Ernst & Youngs 13 (Ernst & Youngs is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London. Arctic oil
and gas)
http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Arctic_oil_and_gas/$FILE/Arctic_oil_and_gas.pdf
Russian Arctic opportunities may in fact be the big prize. Over the last few years, Russia has
intensified the development of the vast hydrocarbon resources of its continental shelf, through
state incentives aimed at stimulating offshore oil and gas production. The area of Russias shelf and continental slope totals 6.2
million square kilometers, with the vast majority in the Arctic area. The defined area of the continental shelf
may be increased as Russia prepares an application to extend its borders over 1.2 million
square kilometers of Arctic waters, an application expected to be finalized by the end of 2013. The Government
of Russia is also completing development of the state program on exploration and development of mineral resources of the
Arctic continental shelf for 201230. Intensifying geological/ exploration activity is one of the programs main priorities, to be
supported primarily by investments from private Russian oil and gas companies. Twenty major oil and gas
provinces and basins have been discovered on the Russian shelf, 10 of which have proved oil and gas
reserves. The largest Arctic sedimentary basins are the East Barents, South Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi basins. The
majority of local resources (around 94% of the total) have been found in the western part, while the hydrocarbon potential of the
eastern part, along the slope and in the deep Arctic basin, is mostly regarded as inferred or contingent. Gazprom and
Rosneft are currently the only companies allowed to receive new licenses to explore Russias
continental shelf. The two companies hold the majority of licenses (29 for Rosneft and 16 for Gazprom), with the licenses
mainly located in the Okhotsk, Kara and Barents seas. However, according to Russias Arctic shelf development program, more
companies may gain the right to explore and produce oil and gas in the offshore strip, including some smaller, private companies
or subsidiaries of state-controlled companies. A number of Russian private companies are interested in
participating in the Arctic shelf and are lobbying for liberalization of access to shelf projects.
Among them, LUKOIL has proposed the concept of a National Company, which might cover many private companies and grant
such companies the right to participate in shelf projects. Currently Russian authorities are considering changes in the legislation
on foreign investments in strategic sectors, including the oil and gas industry, to lighten procedures for foreign companies to
participate in development of such projects. Gazproms proposed mega-LNG project in the Russian Arctic, the Shtokman
development, to be developed jointly with Statoil and Total SA, faces increasing uncertainty. With cost estimates rising sharply
and the expected market for much of the LNG NorthAmerica effectively evaporating with the shale boom, Gazprom and its
partners are rethinking the project. Statoil has since withdrawn from the Shtokman project, choosing not to renew its
participation when the original agreement expired in June 2012. As a result, Gazprom has postponed any final investment decision
until 2014. Notably, in the middle of December 2012 the company announced it would continue developing the project. The
recent agreement between Rosneft and ExxonMobil for joint offshore development in the Kara and Black seas, signed in August
2011, is a significant new step in exploring and producing hydrocarbons on the Russian shelf. This deal demonstrates that both
domestic and international companies are interested in cooperating in this area. The total investment required in the project is
estimated at US$500 billion. Rosneft would control a 67% stake in the joint venture, while ExxonMobil would control the rest.
Similar JVs are in place with Eni, to focus on Barents Sea exploration, and with Statoil, focusing on exploration in the Barents and
Okhotsk seas. Looking forward to 2020, it is expected that Rosneft and Gazprom will remain the
main drivers in developing Russias continental shelf. According to our estimates, based on information from
public sources attributed to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Energy, licenses to exploit
subsurface resources in the Arctic and Far East seas will be split between these two companies in 2020, with about 41 licenses
belonging to Rosneft and 32 to Gazprom. The main targets for Rosneft are expected to be the Barents shelf (including its
southeastern part, named the Pechora Sea) and Okhotsk seas (31 licenses), while Gazprom is expected to concentrate on Kara
Sea projects (21 licenses).

Econ
Melting of see ice key to economic growth
Lefeber 8/24/2012 (Rene DOCTOR CHAIR IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW THE
THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM Polar Warming: An Opportune
Inconveniencehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151241)
Polar warming offers unprecedented opportunities for mankind. The northern sea routes will,
at least for part of the year, become ice free and navigable (the North-west Passage, the North-
east Passage, and the Transatlantic Passage). These routes will be shorter and safer than the
traditional sea routes that are stricken by pirates, terrorism and war. The surface of the North
Pole Region that is suitable for forestry and agriculture will increase as a result of thawing and
drying up of tundra. The presence of increased amounts of melting water will make the Polar
Regions, at least the North Pole Region, a suitable location for the establishment of industries
that make intensive use of water or hydropower. The exploitation of mineral resources, which
have so far not been exploited due to technical or economical obstacles, may become possible
and profitable in the foreseeable future. The metamorphosis of the North Pole Region from an
ice world into a water world will make it accessible for harvesting of fish species, such as
Arctic cod and Arctic char, which live in relatively cold waters and are expected to migrate to
northern waters as the water temperature rises. Together with the increase of human
activities, the number of people taking up permanent or temporary residence in the Polar
Regions is also likely to increase

Oil
Warming solves for oil production
Ernst & Youngs 13 (Ernst & Youngs is a multinational professional services firm headquartered in London. Arctic oil
and gas)
http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Arctic_oil_and_gas/$FILE/Arctic_oil_and_gas.pdf
The region above the Arctic Circle accounts for only about 6% of the Earths surface area,
but it could account for as much as 20% of the worlds undiscovered but recoverable oil and
natural gas resources. The existence of hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic has been known for decades, but only
in recent years has the opening to full-scale resource development and navigation such as
the fabled Northwest Passage that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or the
Northern Sea Route that will connect Europe and western Russia with eastern Russia and
Asian markets become technically and economically feasible. Only about one-third of the Arctic is
covered by land; another third consists ofthe offshore continental shelf, with waters generally less than 500 meters deep and
the remaining third comprises ocean waters, typically deeper than 500 meters. Much (if not most) of the Arctic
waters are currently ice-covered for most of the year. However, the polar ice cap has been
noticeably receding in recent years, quite possibly as a consequence of global climate
change. The Arctic region contains portions of eight countries Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway,
Russia, Sweden and the United States. Finland and Sweden do not border on the Arctic Ocean and are the only Arctic countries
without jurisdictional claims in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas. Large oil and natural gas fields are
particularly important in reducing the cost to develop Arctic resources because they help
pay for the infrastructure required for smaller fields. Large Arctic oil and natural gas discoveries began in
Russia in 1962, with the discovery of the Tazovskoye Field, followed in 1967 with the discovery of the US Alaskan Prudhoe Bay
Field. Approximately 61 large oil and natural gas fields have been discovered so far within
the Arctic Circle 43 are in Russia, 11 in Canada, 6 in Alaska and 1 in Norway.1 In 2008, the United States Geological
Survey (USGS) released the first-ever wide-ranging assessment of Arctic oil and gas resources, estimating the regions
undiscovered and technically recoverable conventional oil and natural gas resources. Of the 33 Arctic sedimentary provinces
that the USGS evaluated, 25 were found to have a greater than 10% probability of having oil or gas deposits larger than 50
million barrels of oil equivalent. The USGS assessment concluded that approximately 90 billion
barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of gas, and 44billion barrels of natural gas liquids
(NGLs) may remain to be found in the Arctic. Of the total 412 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe),
approximately 84% is expected to be found offshore, and abouttwo-thirds (67%) of the total was natural gas.2,3

Ice Age
Ice age coming now thanks, solar cycles.
Watts 7/15 meteorologist president of IntelliWeather Inc., editor of Watts Up With That, prominent climate denial blog, AMS
seal holder, college dropout (Anthony, Newsbytes: Suns Bizarre Activity May Trigger Another Little Ice Age (Or Not), 7/15/13; <
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/15/newsbytes-suns-bizarre-activity-may-trigger-another-little-ice-age-or-not/>)//Beddow
From the GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser Weakest Solar Cycle In Almost 200 Years The sun is acting bizarrely and
scientists have no idea why. Solar activity is in gradual decline, a change from the norm which in
the past triggered a 300-year-long mini ice age. We are supposed to be at a peak of activity, at solar maximum.
The current situation, however, is outside the norm and the number of sunspots seems in steady decline. The sun was
undergoing bizarre behaviour said Dr Craig DeForest of the society. It is the smallest solar maximum we have seen in 100 years,
said Dr David Hathaway of Nasa. Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times, 12 July 2013 The fall-off in sunspot activity still has
the potential to affect our weather for the worse, Dr Elliott said. It all points to perhaps another
little ice age, he said. It seems likely we are going to enter a period of very low solar activity and
could mean we are in for very cold winters. And while the researchers in the US said the data showed a decline in
activity, they had no way to predict what that might mean for the future. Dick Ahlstrom, The Irish Times, 12 July 2013 Were in a
new age of solar physics, says David Hathaway of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who analysed the
same data and came to the same conclusion. We dont know why the Gleissberg cycle takes place but understanding it is now a
focus. As for when the next Maunder minimum may happen, DeToma will not even hazard a guess. We still do not know how or
why the Maunder minimum started, so we cannot predict the next one. Stuart Clark, New Scientist, 12 July 2013


CO2 emissions key to avert ice age.
Jones 4/23 engineer, consultant, and contributing editor of Perihelion (Eric M, IS Global Warming Vital to Human Survival,
4/23/13; < http://newsblaze.com/story/20130423133511mcco.nb/topstory.html>)//Beddow
The Earth has been warming for a very long time. We live in the Holocene Interglacial Epoch.
Virtually all human civilization from about 11,550 years ago took place in it. There is every
reason to believe that we will return to kilometer-thick glaciers sometime in the future. All it
takes is for the polar winter to get a minute longer year-by-year. You wouldn't even notice. Whether or not human civilization is
responsible for global warming is a widespread popular argument. Humans are certainly responsible for a part, and perhaps most of
this temperature rise, but there many reasons to take a less rabid view: 1) Science is not a matter of getting a show-of-hands or
signing petitions. Really it isn't. Honest! I would guess that most scientists - if faced with a call for a show-of-hands at a conference -
wouldn't comply. 2) In the words of Quantum Physicist Dr. David Deutsch1, "Regardless of which side you are on, it is too late to
prevent a global-warming disaster if there is to be one. In fact, it was too late to stop the global-warming disaster back in the 1970's
when the best scientific theory said that atmospheric particulate pollution was going to cause a new ice age that would
destroy industrial civilization and kill millions. We can ease the current problem somewhat, but we certainly
can't prevent it." 3) Not long after the Pilgrims landed in the New World in 1620, one could skate across New York harbor on the
winter ice. The Earth is now not as much warmer-than-average, as it was then colder-than-average. This should give one pause. 4)
Having a First-World baby is a Jolly-Green-Giant carbon footprint. Little has been said about this. A US baby is responsible for adding
one-million kilograms of CO2 to the environment over a lifetime. It does no good to halve the CO2 per person and then double the
population. Until environmentalists are interested in tackling First-World population growth (and they won't ever be), they're just
whistling past the graveyard. So don't talk to me about AGW if your first words aren't "We gotta control the population...." You
might have guessed that I am not likely to be seen marching in any "AGW Environmentalist" parades. But, nevertheless, I think
something big is going on. And at the risk of being exposed as wildly naive, I present to you some evidence that at least should make
you stop and think, and with which you should be familiar ... whichever side of the argument you are on. Have you seen the
Sun recently? It is now quieter than any time in the last century. Fewer sunspots mean a cooler,
less active Sun with a shorter solar-cycle period. Many people are concerned over this "Solar Minimum."2 Solar
Minimums such as the Oort Minimum 1010-1050; the Wolf Minimum; 1280-1350; the Sprer Minimum 1460-1550; the Maunder
Minimum 1645-1715; and the Dalton Minimum 1790-1820 were all accompanied by global cooling and crop
failures, bad weather, mass migrations, wars, starvation and social unrest. (Many historians attribute
the witch burning hysteria of the middle ages partly to the "Little Ice Age," starting with the Wolf minimum and continuing until the
end of the Maunder Minimum). And were there Solar Maximums3, too? Yes, indeed. The Medieval warm spell 1100-1250 was one;
but there was not another of any real importance until 1950 and lasting until today. Milankovitch4 calculated the various
components of Solar-system celestial mechanics to definitively show what caused ice ages. Others have corroborated his work and
have shown the same thing. This is viewed as settled science, because it is only physics and math. All the calculations
point to a coming ice age, also depending somewhat on how humans influence the climate.
But it is still a complicated problem due to many overlapping influences; volcanoes being one, humans being another. Could
people screw up the atmosphere sufficiently to delay the onset of the next ice-age? Maybe...but
nobody knows. Some years ago I stumbled across a stunning paper by Penn and Livingston that declared: "Sunspots may disappear
by 2015." This is a bold assertion and if true, a very bad thing for us humans. These two very soft-spoken NASA scientists determined
this simply by recording the data for 20 years that showed the magnet fields associated with sunspots was declining by 50 Gauss per
year (the equivalent of a really-really-really gigantic refrigerator magnet).


Ag
Warming hugely boosts agricultural yield.
Moore 08 - Thomas Gale Moore is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Between 1985 and 1989 he
was a member of President Reagans Council of Economic Advisers (Thomas Gale, Global Warming: A Balance Sheet, 2008; <
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GlobalWarmingABalanceSheet.html>)//Beddow
In many parts of the world, warmer weather should mean longer growing seasons. If the world
were to warm, the hotter climate would enhance evaporation from the seas and, in all
probability, lead to more precipitation worldwide. Moreover, the enrichment of the atmosphere
with CO2 would fertilize plants, making for more vigorous growth. The IPCC assessment of warming is
that a few degrees of projected warming will lead to general increases in temperate crop
yields, with some regional variation (IPCC 2001, p. 32). Bjrn Lomborg, a Danish environmentalist and statistician,
reported that with moderate adaptation by farmers, warming would boost cereal production in
richer countries by 414 percent, while cutting them in poorer countries by 67 percent (2001, p. 288). The U.S.
Department of Agriculture, in a cautious report, reviewed the likely influence of global warming and concluded
that the overall effect on world food production would be slightly positive and that, therefore,
agricultural prices would probably decrease (Kane et al. 1991).



Elevated CO2 levels on plants ?
Madan et al. 12 (P. Madan Division of Plant Physiology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute Effect of elevated CO2 and
High Temperature on Seed-Set and Grain Quality of Rice, Journal of Experimental Botany, Feb 20, 2012
patterninghttp://jxb.oxfordjournals.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/63/10/3843.full.pdf+html)
The effects of [CO2 ] on biomass (increased by 50%) and seed yield (increased by 24% to 30%) observed in
this study are similar to those of other studies in controlled environments (Baker, 2004; Ainsworth, 2008). Recent FACE (Free Air
CO2 Enrichment) studies under near-eld conditions have, however, demonstrated the yield
increase in response to elevated CO2 to be less than that obtained under enclosure studies (Long et al., 2006; Ainsworth,
2008; Long and Ort, 2010). Our rst hypothesis was that no interaction would be found between tissue temperature and [CO2]
on seed-set, and the results support this. There appears to be a very small effect of [CO2] on seed-set in IR64, but the interaction
between temperature and *CO2+ was not signicant. Thus, a small increase in tissue temperature can lead to
a large decline in seed-set and yield. Tissue temperature increases due to a decrease in transpiration cooling at
higher [CO2 ] and genetic variation for this trait exists (Weerakoon et al., 2008) and is inuenced by vapour pressure decit
(Gholipoor et al., 2010). It has also been hypothesized that [CO2] would increase spikelet numbers
at all temperatures, which would result in greater seed numbers. Although [CO2] increased
yield potential (number of spikelets) at 29 C, this response was not observed at 35 C or 38 C.
Moreover, an increase in the total number of spikelets on the main tiller panicle of the hybrid
was observed which could indicate a possible developmental mechanism in response to
increasing temperature. In any case, greater growth rates or yield potentials at higher [CO2] and also high temperatures,
particularly in the case of the hybrid, cannot compensate for the direct effects of high temperature at anthesis on spikelet fertility
and these episodes will remain a major constraint in the future as well as under current climates (Wheeler et al., 1996; Wassmann
et al., 2009). The observed increase in individual kernel weight with increasing temperature is
associated with greater spikelet sterility and hence compensation for a smaller sink size.

Desertification

Increased carbon emissions are key to global greening.
Taylor 7/12 managing editor of Environment and Climate News, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, environmentalist JD
from Syracuse University (James M., Global Warming? No, Satellites Show Carbon Dioxide is Causing Global Greening, 7/12/13;
<news.heartland.org/editorial/2013/07/12/global-warming-no-satellites-show-carbon-dioxide-causing-global-greening)//Beddow
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are bolstering plant life throughout the world,
environmental scientists report in a newly published peer-reviewed study. The findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters,
are gleaned from satellite measurements of global plant life, and contradict assertions by activists that global warming is causing
deserts to expand, along with devastating droughts. A team of scientists led by environmental physicist Randall Donohue, a research
scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, analyzed satellite data from 1982
through 2010. The scientists documented a carbon dioxide fertilization effect that has caused a
gradual greening of the Earth, and particularly the Earths arid regions, since 1982. The satellite data
showed rising carbon dioxide levels caused a remarkable 11 percent increase in foliage in arid
regions since 1982, versus what would be the case if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had
remained at 1982 levels. Lots of papers have shown an average increase in vegetation across the globe, and there is a lot
of speculation about whats causing that, said Donohue in a press release accompanying the study. Up until this point, theyve
linked the greening to fairly obvious climatic variables, such as a rise in temperature where it is normally cold or a rise in rainfall
where it is normally dry. Lots of those papers speculated about the CO2 effect, but it has been very difficult to prove. The study
noted that foliage in warm, wet regions such as tropical rainforests are near their maximum capacity. In warm, arid regions
there is room for greater increases in foliage and rising carbon dioxide levels are inducing more
prevalent plant growth. Carbon dioxide acts as aerial fertilizer and also helps plants thrive under
arid conditions. Although global precipitation has increased during the past century as the Earth has warmed, elevated carbon
dioxide levels are assisting plant life in warm, dry regions independent of and in addition to increases in global precipitation. The
effect of higher carbon dioxide levels on plant function is an important process that needs greater consideration, said Donohue.
Even if nothing else in the climate changes as global CO2 levels rise, we will still see significant environmental changes because of
the CO2 fertilization effect. Donohue focused special attention on Australia in an additional press release. Although global drought
is becoming less frequent and less severe as the Earth modestly warms, activists claim global warming is causing harmful drought in
Australia. In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water
every efficiently, said Donohue. Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilization. On the face of it, elevated CO2
boosting the foliage in dry country is good news and could assist forestry and agriculture in such areas, Donohue reported, while
adding that scientists should still monitor secondary effects. The satellite data show plant life in the United States has
especially benefited from rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and gradually warming
temperatures. Satellite data show foliage has increased in the vast majority of the United States since 1982, with the western
U.S. benefiting the most. Indeed, many western regions experienced a greater than 30 percent increase in foliage since 1982.
Other regions showing particularly strong increases in foliage include the Sahel region of Africa,
the Horn of Africa, southern Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and nearly all of Europe.

That stops desertification.
Lehman 7/9 writer for Headlines and Global News, citing a study based on CSIRO in collaboration with Australian National
University (Sam, Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Causing Desert Greening, 7/9/13;
<http://www.hngn.com/articles/7242/20130709/rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-causing-desert-greening.htm>)//Beddow
Rise in the level of carbon dioxide in the air is causing desert "greening" and has increased
foliage cover by 11 percent. Up until now the negative aspects of rising levels of carbon dioxide have been highlighted in
almost all studies conducted on this matter. A new study, based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian
National University (ANU) reported that the rising levels of carbon dioxide have caused deserts to start
greening and increased foliage cover by 11 percent from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid
areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa." In Australia, our native
vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water
very efficiently," CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue, said in a press statement. "Australian vegetation seems
quite sensitive to CO2 fertilization." While scientists have speculated that carbon dioxide may be
causing such changes, this is the first study that confirmed the effects. For the study, researchers used a
mathematical modeling together with satellite data adjusted to take out the observed effects of other influences such as rainfall, air
temperature, the amount of light and land-use changes. Elevated carbon dioxide levels affect the
photosynthesis process of a leaf causing it to consume less water to convert sunlight into
sugar. This leads to plants in arid environments increasing their number of leaves. This increase in
the number of leaves can be easily detected by satellites since foliage cover is less in arid areas when compared to wet locations.
"On the face of it, elevated CO2 boosting the foliage in dry country is good news and could assist
forestry and agriculture in such areas; however there will be secondary effects that are likely to influence water
availability, the carbon cycle, fire regimes and biodiversity, for example," Dr Donohue concluded. "Ongoing research is required if we
are to fully comprehend the potential extent and severity of such secondary effects." The findings of the study were published in the
journal US Geophysical Research Letters.


Desertification destroys biodiversity.
Senanayake 12 Chairman of Rainforest Rescue International, Senior Scientist at Counterpart International, Project Director at
Worldview Myanmar Chairman (Ranil, Desertification and Biodiversity, 3/25/12; <
http://groundviews.org/2012/03/25/desertification-and-biodiversity/>)//Beddow
The link between land degradation and desertification has been made abundantly clear in
studies conducted in Africa and Australia. A loss of natural vegetation, a loss in soil organic
matter and a loss of soil stability contribute greatly to the process. These processes are often
interlinked. Vegetation encourages soil stability by providing cover, the binding action of roots,
providing root exudates and by the contribution of its biomass to the soil. A loss of vegetation
results in a corresponding loss of soil organic matter and stability. Soil organic matter and soil stability are
often linked. A soil that becomes depauperate in its content of organic matter looses the glue that holds soil particles together and
becomes easily erodible. The more a soil erodes the more difficult it becomes for the soil microorganisms to glue the particles
together. The process is analogous to a spiders web in the wind. A whole web can withstand the pressure. If one of the threads that
anchor it is broken the spider can repair it, but if the rate of damage is slowly increased, there will come a time when the spider
cannot repair the damage and the web will be destroyed by the wind. Every environment has a threshold beyond
which damage cannot be repaired by the natural system. In arid and semi arid environments
this threshold is very low. This does not mean that these environments are unusable. Merely that management has to be
sensitive to these constraints. The lessons of mismanagement are thick about us. The forests of Lebanon and the
forests of central China have been replaced by deserts as a consequence of poor management.
In other places, humanity has used such lands for time immemorial and still does today. It means
that good land management is critical in addressing arid and semi arid lands. Studies of arid and semi-arid ecosystems indicate that
the original ecosystems are uniquely adapted to the harsh climate, when they are disturbed or
destroyed, the ecosystem moves towards desertification. These ecosystems are rich in
biodiversity and have distinctive associations of plants and animals when stable. Biodiversity,
it must be noted is the measure of the variability of living organisms at any spatio-temporal
point. It does not mean wild, endemic, rare or even native, merely the measure of variability. Thus a certain suite of species will
represent the biodiversity of a wild area in a given environment, while a different suite of species will represent a human managed
area in the same environment. Degradation is usually accompanied by the loss of biodiversity in either
environment. Therefore, biodiversity is a good indicator of land degradation. As land
degradation and desertification are closely linked, biodiversity can also serve as a good indicator
of desertification.