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  • Caselist.CitesClass[38]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[39]

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Caselist.CitesClass[38]

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1		-2016-09-19 16:32:55.917
	1	+2016-09-19 16:32:55.0

Caselist.CitesClass[39]

Cites

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	1	+Warming is getting worse - we need to cut emissions or we’ll cross a critical threshold.
	2	+Harvey 13 Fiona, Guardian Environment Reporter, IPCC climate report: human impact is 'unequivocal', September 27 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-climate-report-un-secretary-general
	3	+World leaders must now respond to an "unequivocal" message from climate scientists and act with policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the United Nations secretary-general urged on Friday. Introducing a major report from a high level UN panel of climate scientists, Ban Ki-moon said, "The heat is on. We must act." The world's leading climate scientists, who have been meeting in all-night sessions this week in the Swedish capital, said there was no longer room for doubt that climate change was occurring, and the dominant cause has been human actions in pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In their starkest warning yet, following nearly seven years of new research on the climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said it was "unequivocal" and that even if the world begins to moderate greenhouse gas emissions, warming is likely to cross the critical threshold of 2C by the end of this century. That would have serious consequences, including sea level rises, heatwaves and changes to rainfall meaning dry regions get less and already wet areas receive more. In response to the report, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said in a statement: "This is yet another wakeup call: those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire." "Once again, the science grows clearer, the case grows more compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or commonsense should be willing to even contemplate," he said. He said that livelihoods around the world would be impacted. "With those stakes, the response must be all hands on deck. It's not about one country making a demand of another. It's the science itself, demanding action from all of us. The United States is deeply committed to leading on climate change." In a crucial reinforcement of their message – included starkly in this report for the first time – the IPCC warned that the world cannot afford to keep emitting carbon dioxide as it has been doing in recent years. To avoid dangerous levels of climate change, beyond 2C, the world can only emit a total of between 800 and 880 gigatonnes of carbon. Of this, about 530 gigatonnes had already been emitted by 2011. That has a clear implication for our fossil fuel consumption, meaning that humans cannot burn all of the coal, oil and gas reserves that countries and companies possess. As the former UN commissioner Mary Robinson told the Guardian last week, that will have "huge implications for social and economic development." It will also be difficult for business interests to accept. The central estimate is that warming is likely to exceed 2C, the threshold beyond which scientists think global warming will start to wreak serious changes to the planet. That threshold is likely to be reached even if we begin to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, which so far has not happened, according to the report. Other key points from the report are: • Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now at levels "unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years." • Since the 1950's it's "extremely likely" that human activities have been the dominant cause of the temperature rise. • Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased to levels that are unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels is the main reason behind a 40 increase in C02 concentrations since the industrial revolution. • Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3C to 4.8C, by the end of the century depending on how much governments control carbon emissions. • Sea levels are expected to rise a further 26-82cm by the end of the century. • The oceans have acidified as they have absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted. Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the working group on physical science, said the message that greenhouse gases must be reduced was clear. "We give very relevant guidance on the total amount of carbon that can't be emitted to stay to 1.5 or 2C. We are not on the path that would lead us to respect that warming target which has been agreed by world governments." He said: "Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions." Though governments around the world have agreed to curb emissions, and at numerous international meetings have reaffirmed their commitment to holding warming to below 2C by the end of the century, greenhouse gas concentrations are still rising at record rates. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, said it was for governments to take action based on the science produced by the panel, consisting of thousands of pages of detail, drawing on the work of more than 800 scientists and hundreds of scientific papers. The scientists also put paid considered to claims that global warming has "stopped" because global temperatures in the past 15 years have not continued the strong upward march of the preceding years, which is a key argument put forward by sceptics to cast doubt on climate science. But the IPCC said the longer term trends were clear: "Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850 in the northern hemisphere the earliest date for reliable temperature records for the whole hemisphere." The past 15 years were not such an unusual case, said Stocker. "People always pick 1998 but that was a very special el Niño made it unusually hot, and since then there have been some medium-sized volcanic eruptions that have cooled the climate." But he said that further research was needed on the role of the oceans, which are thought to have absorbed more than 90 of the warming so far. The scientists have faced sustained attacks from so-called sceptics, often funded by "vested interests" according to the UN, who try to pick holes in each item of evidence for climate change. The experts have always known they must make their work watertight against such an onslaught, and every conclusion made by the IPCC must pass scrutiny by all of the world's governments before it can be published. Their warning on Friday was sent out to governments around the globe, who convene and fund the IPCC. It was 1988 when scientists were first convened for this task, and in the five landmark reports since then the research has become ever clearer. Now, scientists say they are certain that "warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout the climate system that are unprecedented over decades to millennia." That warning, from such a sober body, hemmed in by the need to submit every statement to extraordinary levels of scrutiny, is the starkest yet. "Heatwaves are very likely to occur more frequently and last longer. As the earth warms, we expect to see currently wet regions receiving more rainfall, and dry regions receiving less, although there will be exceptions," Stocker said. Qin Dahe, also co-chair of the working group, said: "As the ocean warm, and glaciers and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level will continue to rise, but at a faster rate than we have experienced over the past 40 years." Prof David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said: "The far-reaching consequences of this warming are becoming understood, although some uncertainties remain. The most significant uncertainty, however, is how much carbon humanity will choose to put into the atmosphere in the future. It is the total sum of all our carbon emissions that will determine the impacts. We need to take action now, to maximise our chances of being faced with impacts that we, and our children, can deal with. Waiting a decade or two before taking climate
	4	+Warming causes extinction – need to act now
	5	+McCoy ’14: (Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4—2—14, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510, )
	6	+The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of the physical science of global warming 1, the IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival, health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is “virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system” and that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic 1. Its new report outlines the future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations is at risk.” 2 Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century.” 3 The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. 4 “Business as usual” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40 increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised global community.” 5. The IPCC warns of “tipping points” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe.” 2 And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” 6
	7	+Nuclear energy solves climate change and decrease air pollution – outweighs any externalities.
	8	+Jogalekar ’13 *bracketed*: (Ashutosh Jogalekar. “Nuclear power may have saved 1.8 million lives otherwise lost to fossil fuels, may save up to 7 million more.” Scientific American. April 2, 2013FT)
	9	+Nuclear power is often promoted as a low-carbon source that mitigates fossil fuel emissions and the resulting health damage and deaths caused by air pollution. But is it possible to provide estimates and actually quantify these effects? A new paper from NASA’s Goddard Institute authored by Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen in the journal Environmental Science and Technology purports to do just that. Hansen is well known as one of the founders of modern global warming science. The authors come up with the striking figure of estimate 1.8 million as the number of lives saved by replacing fossil fuel sources with nuclear. They also estimate the saving of up to 7 million lives in the next four decades, along with substantial reductions in carbon emissions, were nuclear power to replace fossil fuel usage on a large scale. In addition the study finds that the proposed expansion of natural gas would not be as effective in saving lives and preventing carbon emissions. In general the paper provides optimistic reasons for the responsible and widespread use of nuclear technologies in the near future. It also drives home the point that nuclear energy has prevented many more deaths than what it has caused. Let’s start with the abstract: “In the aftermath of the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the future contribution of nuclear power to the global energy supply has become somewhat uncertain. Because nuclear power is an abundant, low-carbon source of base-load power, on balance it could make a large contribution to mitigation of global climate change and air pollution. Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. Based on global projection data that take into account the effects of Fukushima, we find that by midcentury, nuclear power could prevent an additional 420,000 to 7.04 million deaths and 80 to 240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.” The authors look at deaths caused by various power sources during the period 1971-2009. To provide a comparison they build a model in which all the power which was provided by nuclear energy was hypothetically replaced by fossil fuel sources. They employ the same technique for the projected 2010-2050 period, assuming that all current nuclear power sources have been replaced by fossil fuels. Two scenarios are considered - one in which nuclear is replaced by coal and another in which it is replaced by gas. This takes into account the uncertainty regarding the nature of fossil fuel usage that’s inherent in future energy projections. It’s worth noting that the authors consider only deaths and exclude from the model serious health crises such as heart failure, bronchitis and other respiratory problems; including these problems would further weaken the case for fossil fuels. The study also excludes aspects of nuclear power that cannot be easily quantified, such as deaths from nuclear proliferation. The results are quite clear. In the 2000-2009 period alone nuclear power may have prevented an average of 76,000 deaths. This is an average and the range is quite large, but even the lower limit runs into the tens of thousands. For countries like Germany which have cut back on nuclear, the range of deaths is naturally higher. This is a result that Japan's current leaders should take to heart. What is even more starkly clear is that the number of deaths caused by nuclear power is far lower than those saved by it; in fact there’s scant comparison. As the report notes, even the worst nuclear accident in history (Chernobyl) caused about 40 deaths; these include 28 immediate responders and about 15 deaths caused among 6000 victims of excess cancers (it’s always very difficult to detect statistically significant excess cancers in the presence of a high natural background rate). There have been no deaths attributable to the Three Mile Island accident. And while the verdict on Fukushima is still not definitive, the latest report on the accident predicts no direct deaths and a much lower exposure to radiation for the surrounding population than that purported to lead to fatal cancers. The bottom line is that, even assuming pessimistic scenarios, the number of deaths caused by nuclear power is a minuscule fraction of those lives which were saved by nuclear power replacing fossil fuels. Nuclear-free projections for the next four decades look even more dire. The authors estimate between 4 to and 7 million deaths for the “All-Coal” scenario and between 420, 000 – 680, 000 deaths for an “All-Gas” energy policy. This is something which countries like Germany and Japan that are planning to phase out nuclear must seriously consider. Only if all the nuclear power were replaced by equipotent renewable energy sources in the next four decades would these deaths be prevented. This kind of high-capacity deployment of renewables seems quite uncertain for now. Of course it’s not just the deaths. All the fossil fuel sources replacing nuclear power would contribute a very significant concentration of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and severely aggravate the effects of climate change. The authors estimate an additional 80 to 240 GtCO2-equivalents of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel sources in the next forty years if nuclear power were to decline. To put this into perspective, consider that the total amount of “allowable” input of greenhouse gases required to achieve a 350 ppm CO2 target by the end of the century is 500 GtCO2-equivalent. Nuclear power could thus reduce this load by 16-48. Deploying some of the new promising reactor technologies could reduce this load even more. The conclusions of the study are quite unambiguous. Even assuming uncertainties, nuclear power has saved at least hundreds of thousands of lives in the past forty years, and possibly millions. This is in stark contrast to the small number of lives lost in only one catastrophic nuclear accident. There are many more millions that would be lost if countries were to embark on a nuclear-free future replaced by fossil fuels. Natural gas might be a reasonable bridge to this future but it’s clear that it cannot be a sustainable one. It would take “heroic” efforts (in the words of the International Energy Agency) to replace all the nuclear power in the world with renewables in the next forty years. New generations of nuclear reactors like the molten salt and pebble bed reactors promise to make nuclear energy even more safe, efficient and cheap. Even Bill Gates is investing in a novel reactor design. The verdict is staring us in the face; we ignore energy from the atom at our own peril, and at the potential cost of a staggering number of lives from our children and grandchildren’s generation. It's not the kind of legacy we want to be remembered for.
	10	+Nuclear power supplies 11 of the world’s electricity – prohibiting would be a huge increase in yearly emissions.
	11	+WNA ’16: (World Nuclear Association, “Plans For New Reactors Worldwide,” April 2016 http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx)
	12	+Today there are some 440 nuclear power reactors operating in 31 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of over 385 GWe. In 2014 these provide 2411 billion kWh, over 11 of the world's electricity. Over 60 power reactors are currently being constructed in 13 countries plus Taiwan (see Table below), notably China, South Korea, UAE and Russia. Each year, the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA) sets out the present situation and also reference and other, particularly carbon reduction scenarios. World Energy Outlook 2014 had a special focus on nuclear power, and extends the scope of scenarios to 2040. In its New Policies scenario, installed nuclear capacity growth is 60 through 543 GWe in 2030 and to 624 GWe in 2040 out of a total of 10,700 GWe, with the increase concentrated heavily in China (46 of it), plus India, Korea and Russia (30 of it together) and the USA (16), countered by a 10 drop in the EU. Despite this, the percentage share of nuclear power in the global power mix increases to only 12, well below its historic peak. Low-Nuclear and so-called High-Nuclear cases give 366 and 767 GWe nuclear respectively in 2040. The low-carbon ‘450 Scenario’ gives a cost-effective transition to limiting global warming assuming an effective international agreement in 2015, and this brings about more than doubling nuclear capacity to 862 GWe in 2040, while energy-related CO2 emissions peak before 2020 and then decline. In this scenario, almost all new generating capacity built after 2030 needs to be low-carbon. "Despite the challenges it currently faces, nuclear power has specific characteristics that underpin the commitment of some countries to maintain it as a future option," it said. "Nuclear plants can contribute to the reliability of the power system where they increase the diversity of power generation technologies in the system. For countries that import energy, it can reduce their dependence on foreign supplies and limit their exposure to fuel price movements in international markets." It is noteworthy that in the 1980s, 218 power reactors started up, an average of one every 17 days. These included 47 in USA, 42 in France and 18 in Japan. These were fairly large - average power was 923.5 MWe. So it is not hard to imagine a similar number being commissioned in the years ahead. But with China and India getting up to speed in nuclear energy and a world energy demand increasing, a realistic estimate of what is possible (but not planned at this stage) might be the equivalent of one 1000 MWe unit worldwide every 5 days. Increased nuclear capacity in some countries is resulting from the uprating of existing plants. This is a highly cost-effective way of bringing on new capacity. There is a question of scale, and large units will not fit into small grids. A conservative guide is that peak power demand must be met with effective installed capacity and about 20 reserve margin. Also, the largest single plant should not be more than 10 of base-load, or 5 of peak demand. Numerous power reactors in USA, Belgium, Sweden and Germany, for example, have had their generating capacity increased.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-09-19 16:32:56.882

Judge

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	1	+Nubel

Opponent

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	1	+Strake JH

ParentRound

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	1	+35

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	1	+1

Team

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	1	+Brentwood Jackson Neg

Title

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	1	+SEPTOCT - WARMING

Tournament

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	1	+GH