Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[9]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[9]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[9]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2016-10-14 17:06:17.324
	1	+2016-10-14 17:06:17.0

Caselist.CitesClass[9]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,21 @@
	1	+Warming DA
	2	+Shell
	3	+Nuclear power is currently progressing – many reactors are being built with only more planned. Groskopf ‘01/26
	4	+Christopher Groskopf – reporter. “New nuclear reactors are being built a lot more like cars.” Quartz. January 26, 2016. http://qz.com/581566/new-nuclear-reactors-are-being-built-a-lot-more-like-cars/ JJN
	5	+At its birth, nuclear power was a closely guarded national enterprise, only accessible to the most prosperous nations. But over the last 50 years it has evolved into a robust international market with a global supply chain. Not only are more countries starting or considering new nuclear plants, a great many more countries are contributing to their construction. According to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 66 nuclear reactors are under construction around the world. Dozens more are in various stages of planning. The vast majority of new reactors are being built in China, which has invested in nuclear power in a way not seen since the United States and France first built out their capacity in the 1960’s and 70’s. China’s 2015 Five Year Plan calls for 40 reactors to be built by 2020 and as many as ten more are planned for every year thereafter. Fifteen other countries around the world are also building reactors. The Chinese sprint toward nuclear power is along a path toward becoming a major exporter of nuclear technology and expertise. In addition to adopting western designs, China also has its own reactor designs. Plants based on those designs are also under construction both China and in Pakistan. Other countries are considering them. At the same time China has upgraded its capacity to produce pressure vessels, turbines and other heavy manufacturing components—all of which it is expected to begin exporting. This sort of globalized manufacturing is nothing new: cars, airplanes and most other complicated machines are built in this way. However, it is new for reactors, which must be constructed on-site and rely on highly specialized parts. Those parts must be manufactured to tolerances well beyond what is required in other industries. In some cases even the equipment needed to creating them must be purpose-built. Consider, for example, the steel pressure vessel at the heart of the most common reactor designs. These vessels can only be created in the world’s largest steel presses—some of which exert more than 30,000 pounds of force. The vessels are forged out of solid steel ingots that may weigh more than a million pounds. Until recently there were only a handful of such presses in the world. Today there are at least 23, spread across 11 countries, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA). Such specialization is not limited to heavy manufacturing. Nuclear reactors require thousands of other mechanical and electronic components, many of which are purpose-made. A brochure from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) identifies hundreds of individual parts. (pdf) Even otherwise common products may need to meet extraordinarily fine tolerances. Standards require that steel elements relevant to safety are manufactured with exceptional “nuclear-grade steel.” According to another NEI list, the construction of a new reactor may require a total of: 500 to 3,000 nuclear grade valves 125 to 250 pumps 44 miles of piping 300 miles of electric wiring 90,000 electrical components According to Greg Kaser, who analyzes supply chains for the WNA, the market for nuclear components has been driven by US-based reactor companies, namely Westinghouse Electric Company. “The US can’t produce everything that’s required for a nuclear reactor anymore, so they have to go international,” Kaser told Quartz. Reactors based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 design are under construction in both the US and China. The parts for these reactors are sourced from all over the world. Many come from European companies that were originally created to supply domestic nuclear programs, but have since become important exporters. This trade in nuclear components is difficult to measure. Despite the specific qualifications of a nuclear-grade valve, it is still a valve and doesn’t necessarily show up in trade statistics as anything more. A great deal of trade is also in expertise. Engineers from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States frequently consult on (or lead) nuclear projects around the world. A 2014 WNA report (paywall) estimates that the total value of investments in new nuclear facilities through 2030 will be $1.2 trillion. But this nuclear globalization has not been greeted with enthusiasm everywhere. The 2011 nuclear contamination disaster at Fukushima, Japan, briefly stalled development of some projects and prompted Germany to begin shutting down all of its reactors. A decision by the UK to allow a Chinese company to develop new nuclear reactors in England has led to both domestic and international hand-wringing over the security implications. Others worry about about safety issues resulting from companies faking the certifications required for selling reactor components. In 2013, two South Korean nuclear reactors were shut down when it was discovered that they had installed cables with counterfeit nuclear certifications. This year the IAEA will update a procurement guide for plant operators that was published in 1996. (pdf) The new version will include a chapter specifically addressing counterfeit components. For the moment, it’s unlikely any of these concerns will be enough to slow the resurgent growth of the global nuclear industry. Though big nuclear companies often speak of localizing the supply chain—and keeping those jobs in their home country—international competition can drive down the price of building a reactor. In fact, the supply chain is likely to become even more important to the construction process in the future. New reactors being designed today are both smaller and more modular, and plans call for large sections of them to be assembled in factories and shipped to the site. If it sounds a lot like the assembly line at a automobile plant, that’s because it is. But of course, one small oversight or production flaw could make a much greater difference.
	6	+
	7	+Newest studies prove – warming is real, anthropogenic, and almost certainly caused by emissions from fossil fuels. Phys ‘8/24
	8	+Phys.org. “Humans have caused climate change for 180 years: study.” Phys.org. August 24, 2016. Originally provided by Australia National University from Nature Journal. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-humans-climate-years.html JJN
	9	+An international research project has found human activity has been causing global warming for almost two centuries, proving human-induced climate change is not just a 20th century phenomenon. Lead researcher Associate Professor Nerilie Abram from The Australian National University (ANU) said the study found warming began during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and is first detectable in the Arctic and tropical oceans around the 1830s, much earlier than scientists had expected. "It was an extraordinary finding," said Associate Professor Abram, from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. "It was one of those moments where science really surprised us. But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago." The new findings have important implications for assessing the extent that humans have caused the climate to move away from its pre-industrial state, and will help scientists understand the future impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate. "In the tropical oceans and the Arctic in particular, 180 years of warming has already caused the average climate to emerge above the range of variability that was normal in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution," Associate Professor Abram said. The research, published in Nature, involved 25 scientists from across Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia, working together as part of the international Past Global Changes 2000 year (PAGES 2K) Consortium. Associate Professor Abram said anthropogenic climate change was generally talked about as a 20th century phenomenon because direct measurements of climate are rare before the 1900s. However, the team studied detailed reconstructions of climate spanning the past 500 years to identify when the current sustained warming trend really began. Scientists examined natural records of climate variations across the world's oceans and continents. These included climate histories preserved in corals, cave decorations, tree rings and ice cores. The research team also analysed thousands of years of climate model simulations, including experiments used for the latest report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to determine what caused the early warming. The data and simulations pinpointed the early onset of warming to around the 1830s, and found the early warming was attributed to rising greenhouse gas levels. Co-researcher Dr Helen McGregor, from the University of Wollongong's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said humans only caused small increases in the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere during the 1800s. "But the early onset of warming detected in this study indicates the Earth's climate did respond in a rapid and measureable way to even the small increase in carbon emissions during the start of the Industrial Age," Dr McGregor said. The researchers also studied major volcanic eruptions in the early 1800s and found they were only a minor factor in the early onset of climate warming. Associate Professor Abram said the earliest signs of greenhouse-induced warming developed during the 1830s in the Arctic and in tropical oceans, followed soon after by Europe, Asia and North America. However, climate warming appears to have been delayed in the Antarctic, possibly due to the way ocean circulation is pushing warming waters to the North and away from the frozen continent.
	10	+
	11	+Prohibiting nuclear power means warming can’t be solved – impracticality of renewables combined with a switch to coal only makes warming worse. Harvey ‘12
	12	+Fiona Harvey - award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian, used to work for financial times. “Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs.” The Guardian. May 3, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/03/nuclear-power-solution-climate-change JJN *bracketing in original
	13	+Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough. "We won't meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table," he said. He said coal was likely to continue to be cheaper than renewables and other low-carbon forms of energy, unless the effects of the climate were taken into account. "Fossil fuel prices will remain low enough to wreck low-carbon energy unless you have incentives and carbon pricing," he told the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. A group of four prominent UK environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and former heads of Friends of the Earth UK Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett, have been campaigning against nuclear power in recent weeks, arguing that it is unnecessary, dangerous and too expensive. Porritt told the Guardian: "It nuclear power cannot possibly deliver – primarily for economic reasons. Nuclear reactors are massively expensive. They take a long time to build. And even when they're up and running, they're nothing like as reliable as the industry would have us believe." But Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and professor of sustainable development at Columbia University in the US, said the world had no choice because the threat of climate change had grown so grave. He said greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise despite the financial crisis and deep recession in the developed world, were "nowhere near" falling to the level that would be needed to avert dangerous climate change. He said: "Emissions per unit of energy need to fall by a factor of six. That means electrifying everything that can be electrified and then making electricity largely carbon-free. It requires renewable energy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage – these are all very big challenges. We need to understand the scale of the challenge." Sachs warned that "nice projects" around the world involving renewable power or energy efficiency would not be enough to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming – a wholesale change and overhaul of the world's energy systems and economy would be needed if the world is to hold carbon emissions to 450 parts per million of the atmosphere – a level that in itself may be inadequate. "We are nowhere close to that – as wishful thinking and corporate lobbies are much more powerful than the arithmetic of climate scientists," he said.
	14	+
	15	+Warming leads to extinction – multiple scenarios prove. Roberts ‘13
	16	+David Roberts - staff writer for Grist. “If you aren’t alarmed about climate, you aren’t paying attention.” Grist. January 10, 2013. http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-alarmism-the-idea-is-surreal/ JJN
	17	+There was recently another one of those (numbingly familiar) internet tizzies wherein someone trolls environmentalists for being “alarmist” and environmentalists get mad and the troll says “why are you being so defensive?” and everybody clicks, clicks, clicks. I have no desire to dance that dismal do-si-do again. But it is worth noting that I find the notion of “alarmism” in regard to climate change almost surreal. I barely know what to make of it. So in the name of getting our bearings, let’s review a few things we know. We know we’ve raised global average temperatures around 0.8 degrees C so far. We know that 2 degrees C is where most scientists predict catastrophic and irreversible impacts. And we know that we are currently on a trajectory that will push temperatures up 4 degrees or more by the end of the century. What would 4 degrees look like? A recent World Bank review of the science reminds us. First, it’ll get hot: Projections for a 4°C world show a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high-temperature extremes. Recent extreme heat waves such as in Russia in 2010 are likely to become the new normal summer in a 4°C world. Tropical South America, central Africa, and all tropical islands in the Pacific are likely to regularly experience heat waves of unprecedented magnitude and duration. In this new high-temperature climate regime, the coolest months are likely to be substantially warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. In regions such as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Tibetan plateau, almost all summer months are likely to be warmer than the most extreme heat waves presently experienced. For example, the warmest July in the Mediterranean region could be 9°C warmer than today’s warmest July. Extreme heat waves in recent years have had severe impacts, causing heat-related deaths, forest fires, and harvest losses. The impacts of the extreme heat waves projected for a 4°C world have not been evaluated, but they could be expected to vastly exceed the consequences experienced to date and potentially exceed the adaptive capacities of many societies and natural systems. my emphasis Warming to 4 degrees would also lead to “an increase of about 150 percent in acidity of the ocean,” leading to levels of acidity “unparalleled in Earth’s history.” That’s bad news for, say, coral reefs: The combination of thermally induced bleaching events, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise threatens large fractions of coral reefs even at 1.5°C global warming. The regional extinction of entire coral reef ecosystems, which could occur well before 4°C is reached, would have profound consequences for their dependent species and for the people who depend on them for food, income, tourism, and shoreline protection. It will also “likely lead to a sea-level rise of 0.5 to 1 meter, and possibly more, by 2100, with several meters more to be realized in the coming centuries.” That rise won’t be spread evenly, even within regions and countries — regions close to the equator will see even higher seas. There are also indications that it would “significantly exacerbate existing water scarcity in many regions, particularly northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, while additional countries in Africa would be newly confronted with water scarcity on a national scale due to population growth.” Also, more extreme weather events: Ecosystems will be affected by more frequent extreme weather events, such as forest loss due to droughts and wildfire exacerbated by land use and agricultural expansion. In Amazonia, forest fires could as much as double by 2050 with warming of approximately 1.5°C to 2°C above preindustrial levels. Changes would be expected to be even more severe in a 4°C world. Also loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services: In a 4°C world, climate change seems likely to become the dominant driver of ecosystem shifts, surpassing habitat destruction as the greatest threat to biodiversity. Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is likely to occur in a 4°C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth’s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience. Ecosystem damage would be expected to dramatically reduce the provision of ecosystem services on which society depends (for example, fisheries and protection of coastline afforded by coral reefs and mangroves.) New research also indicates a “rapidly rising risk of crop yield reductions as the world warms.” So food will be tough. All this will add up to “large-scale displacement of populations and have adverse consequences for human security and economic and trade systems.” Given the uncertainties and long-tail risks involved, “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.” There’s a small but non-trivial chance of advanced civilization breaking down entirely. Now ponder the fact that some scenarios show us going up to 6 degrees by the end of the century, a level of devastation we have not studied and barely know how to conceive. Ponder the fact that somewhere along the line, though we don’t know exactly where, enough self-reinforcing feedback loops will be running to make climate change unstoppable and irreversible for centuries to come. That would mean handing our grandchildren and their grandchildren not only a burned, chaotic, denuded world, but a world that is inexorably more inhospitable with every passing decade. Take all that in, sit with it for a while, and then tell me what it could mean to be an “alarmist” in this context. What level of alarm is adequate?
	18	+
	19	+Climate change threatens indigenous people’s culture and puts them at increasingly lower odds of survival. Baird 08
	20	+Baird, Rachel (Litigation attorney in Torrington, Connecticut)."The Impact of Climate Change on Minorities and Indigenous Peoples." Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, April 2008.
	21	+Indigenous peoples tend to live close to nature, in relatively natural environments, rather than in cities, growing and making much of the food and other products that they need to survive. This gives them an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of local weather and plant and animal life. Traditional wisdom on matters such as when to plant crops or where to hunt for food has been accumulated over many generations, but now that the climate is shifting, some of those understandings are proving to be no longer valid. Climate change, and the rapidly increasing amount of land being converted into plantations of biofuel crops, threatens the very existence of some cultures. In the Arctic, where the atmosphere is warming twice as quickly as in the rest of the world, there are currently some 400,000 indigenous peoples. They include the Sami people of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, who traditionally herd reindeer as a way of life.11 Olav Mathis-Eira, a herder and vice-chair of the executive board of the Sami Council, says people first noticed signs of climate change in the mid-1980s, when winter rainfall increased. Now, higher temperatures and increased rainfall are making it harder for reindeer to reach the lichen they eat, which in winter can be covered in ice. ‘There are a lot of starving reindeer in some years,’ he says. The thinning of the Arctic ice has also made reindeer herding tracks dangerous, forcing people to find new routes. ‘Old people used to tell us how to move the herds and where it was safe to go,’ says Mathis-Eira. ‘Now they are not sure if they can do that any more ... because conditions are so different.’ The loss of their ability has damaged old people’s status, he adds: ‘Suddenly, they are nothing.’ Many aspects of Sami culture – language, songs, marriage, child-rearing and the treatment of older people, for instance – are intimately linked with reindeer herding, says Mathis-Eira. ‘If the reindeer herding disappears it will have a devastating effect on the whole culture of the Sami people.... In that way, I think that climate change is threatening the entire Sami, as a people.’ Climate change has also played havoc with the lives of indigenous people living on Nicaragua’s remote North Atlantic coast, where groups such as the Mayangna, Miskitu and Rama peoples live. Rainfall patterns have changed in line with what climate change scientists are predicting for the region and, as a result, people’s traditional knowledge about when to plant crops is no longer reliable. Their ability to correctly identify the rainy season has suffered, leading them to plant crops prematurely. Then, when the rain stops, they lose what they have planted and have to start all over again. Even when the main rainy season does arrive, it is shorter than before, inflicting further economic and psychological damage. ‘To see something growing really nicely is going to make the community optimistic,’ says Carlos Ling, a Nicaraguan who is humanitarian officer for Oxfam in the region. ‘In the middle of that rainy season, they see things rotting away, so collective confidence is being damaged.’ Without surplus crops to exchange with others for goods such as soap and cloth, indigenous peoples have become less prepared to take risks and try new methods, says Ling. ‘They are going to be even more prone to extinction because they are not going to survive in a changing environment when they are not changing themselves,’ he warns. As in the Arctic, the increasingly unpredictable weather has also undermined older people’s ability to interpret their environment and make decisions such as when to plant crops. This, in turn, has damaged community respect for them, and reduced people’s confidence that their community’s intimate knowledge of their environment will guarantee their livelihoods. Instead they have become more interested in alternative means of survival, such as helping drug-traffickers or allowing gold prospectors and loggers into the forest. ‘They are being pressured, more and more, to give away the forests,’ says Ling. While the amounts of money on offer seem small – $300 for a big tree, say – they are huge to people who might make $40 in an entire a year. According to the Nicaraguan government, people living on the Atlantic coast are among the nation’s poorest.12 In northern Kenya, increasingly severe and frequent droughts, as well as major floods, have had a devastating impact on pastoralists. Traditionally, they have survived by herding animals, in an already harsh and dry environment. However, the drought of 2005–6 led to a 70 per cent fall in the size of their herds of cattle, goats and camels, leaving some 80 per cent of pastoralists dependent on international food aid, according to Mohamed Adow. He is regional programme manager for Northern Aid, a Muslim organization based in Mandera in north-east Kenya, which does development and advocacy work with pastoralists. Droughts force them to travel long distances in search of water and have also sparked deadly conflicts over water. The deaths of so many livestock in 2005–6 reduced pastoralists’ food supplies and damaged their health. Around one-third of the pastoralists of northern Kenya are now ‘living on the periphery of their way of life’ – in villages and small communities, where they work for money, having given up their small numbers of remaining livestock to family or kinsmen, says Adow.13

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2016-10-14 17:06:40.826

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Abby Chapman

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Lexington CB

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+9

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+3

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+North Crowley Reed Neg

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2-Warming DA

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+valley