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China Climate Change Negative NAUDL CORE FILES 2016-17

China Climate Negative

Glossary 2

Climate Advantage

Climate Advantage Frontline 3Chinese Emissions are Decreasing Now 6Extension – Chinese Emissions not significant 8Extension- Paris Treaty Fails 9Climate Change is not Happening 10Answers To: Fast Climate Increase 13Answers To Scientific Consensus 14Answers To: Consensus 15Climate Science is Biased 16Too Late to Solve Climate 19Too Little Change To Solve 20Answers To: The effects of climate change are too big to ignore 21CO2 helps Agriculture 22Answers To: Climate hurts Agriculture 25Answers To: Climate hurts Biodiversity 27Answers To: Climate Wars 28Answers To: Climate hurts Economy 30

Science Diplomacy

Science Diplomacy Advantage Frontline 33Extensions: Science Diplomacy Fails – China 36

Solvency

Solvency Frontline 39Extension Alternate Cause – US Action 43Extension – No Chinese Enforcement 44Extensions – No Implementation 46Extension – Chinese Renewables Fail 47Answers To: Innovation Solves 49

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China Climate Change Negative NAUDL CORE FILES 2016-17

Glossary Atmospheric transportation- is the movement of pollutants caused by a time-averaged wind flow

Anthropogenic- environmental harm originating from human activity

Biodiversity- the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem.

Biosphere- the regions of the surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the earth

Climate Change- a change in the distribution of weather patterns that last over an extended period of

time

COP 21- UN negotiations aimed to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate

Decarbonization- the reduction of carbon (gaseous compounds) from the Earth’s atmosphere

Emissions- air pollutants

Existential- relating to existence, often used to describe the nature of a danger to the existence of the planet or the human species.

Global Warming- the calculation of the rise in the temperature of the Earth’s climate system

Green Energy- or renewable energy come from natural sources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides,

plants, algae and geothermal heat.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG)- a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared

radiation

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)- group formed by the United Nations to

assess the state of scientific knowledge about the human role in climate change.

Paris Agreement- an agreement within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention

on Climate Change (UNFCCC) governing greenhouse gases emissions mitigation

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China Climate Change Negative NAUDL CORE FILES 2016-17Climate Advantage Answers

Climate Advantage Frontline 1. The plan is not necessary, China’s CO2 emissions have peaked and are decreasing.Green, 2016, Fergus Green, policy analyst and research advisor to Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics, "Beyond peak coal? The new outlook for China’s carbon emissions", China Dialogue, 3-17-2016, https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/8724-Beyond-peak-coal-The-new-outlook-for-China-s-carbon-emissions/en

Something quite remarkable is happening in China. The country’s Coal use grew at more than 8% per year between 2000 and 2013. But, in 2014, coal use barely grew at all and then it actually fell by more than 3% in 2015. The drop in coal consumption coincided with a 2.5% drop in China’s coal production and a 30% drop in coal imports. The decline is good news for the world, as it meant the country’s carbon dioxide emissions fell by up to 2% in 2015. It is just possible that 2014 could turn out to have been the peak for China’s carbon dioxide emissions.

2. Climate change will be slow and is more than a decade away. There’s no need to drastically act now.Ridley 2015, Matt Ridley, member of the House of Lords and columnist for The Times of London, 11-27-2015, "Climate Change Will Not Be Dangerous for a Long Time," Scientific American, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-will-not-be-dangerous-for-a-long-time/

The climate change debate has been polarized into a simple dichotomy. Either global warming is “real, [hu]man-made and dangerous,” as Pres. Barack Obama thinks, or it’s a “hoax,” as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe thinks. But there is a third possibility: that it is real, [hu]man-made and not dangerous, at least not for a long time. This “lukewarm” option has been boosted by recent climate research, and if it is right, current policies may do more harm than good. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other bodies agree that the rush to grow biofuels, justified as a decarbonization measure, has raised food prices and contributed to rainforest destruction. Since 2013 aid agencies such as the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank have restricted funding for building fossil-fuel plants in Asia and Africa; that has slowed progress in bringing electricity to the one billion people who live without it and the four million who die each year from the effects of cooking over wood fires.

In 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was predicting that if emissions rose in a “business as usual” way, which they have done, then global average temperature would rise at the rate of about 0.3 degree Celsius per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 degree C per decade). In the 25 years since, temperature has risen at about 0.1 to 0.2 degree C per decade, depending on whether surface or satellite data is used. The IPCC, in its most recent assessment report, lowered its near-term forecast for the global mean surface temperature over the period 2016 to 2035 to just 0.3 to 0.7 degree C above the 1986–2005 level. That is a warming of 0.1 to 0.2 degree C per decade, in all scenarios, including the high-emissions ones.

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-will-not-be-dangerous-for-a-long-time/

https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/8724-Beyond-peak-coal-The-new-outlook-for-China-s-carbon-emissions/en

https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/8724-Beyond-peak-coal-The-new-outlook-for-China-s-carbon-emissions/en


Climate Advantage Frontline

3. No evidence of biodiversity loss from climate change, the IPCC retracted its findings about species loss.

Watts 14,Anthony retired AMS certified television meteorologist 12-29-2014, "Despite posited ‘threats of extinctions caused by global warming’, 221 new species described by the California Academy of Sciences in 2014," Watts Up With That?, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/29/despite-posited-threats-of-extinctions-caused-by-global-warming-221-new-species-described-by-the-california-academy-of-sciences-in-2014/

One recent article claimed that: Humans are turning the Earth into a ‘lonely and very dangerous planet‘, ecologist warns – but the bottom line is that the more we look, the more we find no evidence of this being related to global warming. This goes hand in hand with what we reported back in March: IPCC admission from new report: ‘no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct’ along with the snail that was supposed to be the first extinct animal due to global warming that suddenly wasn’t: Ooops! First animal claimed extinct due to ‘climate change’ found ‘alive and well’ From mammals to deep-sea shark fossils, spanning five continents and two oceans, these discoveries add to the family tree of life on Earth In 2014, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added a whopping 221 new plant and animal species to our family tree, enriching our understanding of Earth’s complex web of life and strengthening our ability to make informed conservation decisions. The new species include 110 ants, 16 beetles, three spiders, 28 fishes, 24 sea slugs, two marine worms, 9 barnacles, two octocorals, 25 plants, one waterbear, and one tiny mammal. More than a dozen Academy scientists–along with several dozen international collaborators–described the discoveries. Proving that there are still plenty of places to explore and things to discover on Earth, the scientists made their finds over five continents and two oceans, ventured into remote caves and descended to the bottom of the sea, looked in their owns backyards (California) and on the other side of the world (Africa). Their results, published in 64 different scientific papers, help advance the Academy’s research into two of the most important scientific questions of our time: “How did life evolve?” and “How will it persist?”

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Climate Advantage Frontline

4. Global action fails. The Paris accord is just rhetoric – at best it would reduce less than 0.5 degree warming by 2100

Lomborg 2016 BjØrn director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, 4-24-2016, "Climate change is real, but Paris treaty won't fix it: Column," USA TODAY, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/21/climate-change-real-paris-treaty-costly-few-benefits-research-green-energy-column/83292440/

The Paris accord talks a big game. It doesn’t just commit to capping the global temperature increase at 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The text goes even further and says the world’s leaders commit to keeping the increase “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and will try to cap it at 1.5 degrees Celsius. But this is just rhetoric. My own research and the only peer-reviewed published assessment of the Paris agreement used the United Nation’s favorite climate model to measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every major carbon-cutting promise in the treaty between now and 2030. I found that the total temperature reduction will be just 0.086 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Even if these promises were extended for 70 more years, then all the promises would reduce temperature rises by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. This is similar to a finding by scientists at MIT. It’s feeble. Yet, we will hear claims this week from green campaigners that the treaty will do a lot more. But we should check their math. Such claims are based on completely unrealistic scenarios in which governments do little now but embark on incredibly ambitious carbon reduction policies after 2030. Given that it’s hard to know whether the Paris treaty will withstand the results even of this year’s U.S. presidential election, it seems foolhardy to predict that governments will suddenly become dramatically more ambitious 15 years from now.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/21/climate-change-real-paris-treaty-costly-few-benefits-research-green-energy-column/83292440/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/21/climate-change-real-paris-treaty-costly-few-benefits-research-green-energy-column/83292440/


Chinese Emissions are Decreasing Now (___)

(___) Chinese emissions peaked in 2014 – the plan isn’t necessary.

Shekhtman, 2016, Lonnie Christian Science Monitor Staff Writer 3-7-2016, "China denies claims that the nation's emissions peaked in 2014," The Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0307/China-denies-claims-that-the-nation-s-emissions-peaked-in-2014

China greenhouse gas emissions may have reached their peak in 2014, which means they are now either stable or in decline.

That's generally good news, except that the country promised in a global warming pact signed in Paris last year, that it would cut emission over the next 15 years so that they would peak around 2030 and then start to decline. The fact that the country peaked much earlier suggests to climate advocates that the country may have set targets that are too easy to meet.

"China's international commitment to peak emissions 'around 2030' should be seen as a highly conservative upper limit from a government that prefers to under-promise and over-deliver," write economists Fergus Green and Nicholas Stern from the London School of Economics and Political Science in a paper released Monday.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0307/China-denies-claims-that-the-nation-s-emissions-peaked-in-2014

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/0307/China-denies-claims-that-the-nation-s-emissions-peaked-in-2014


Chinese Emissions are Decreasing Now

(___)

(___) Structural and economic changes are driving a decrease in Chinese emissions now.Green, 2016, Fergus Green, policy analyst and research advisor to Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics, "Beyond peak coal? The new outlook for China’s carbon emissions", China Dialogue, 3-17-2016, https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/8724-Beyond-peak-coal-The-new-outlook-for-China-s-carbon-emissions/en

We forecast that China’s carbon dioxide emissions are likely to peak within the next decade (if they have not done so already). Emissions growth will likely be slow. With high levels of excess capacity already blighting the steel, cement and coal industries, we expect the shift away from energy-intensive industries to continue to put downward pressure on energy consumption growth. And we expect China’s energy supply to continue to shift away from coal. Recently-released statistics for January and February 2016 suggest that each of these trends is in fact accelerating. Both continued structural change in the wider economy and ongoing energy sector transformation feature strongly as themes of China’s recently-released 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). For example, China’s government has recently announced targets and funding mechanisms to close hundreds of millions of tonnes of excess coal and steel production capacity and to support the redeployment of millions of workers from these industries. It has also imposed a three year moratorium on new coal mine approvals. There are a number of risk factors that could cause emissions from fossil fuels to be higher than expected. These include political resistance to necessary reforms from industries and regions with high concentrations of coal mining and steel production, and faster than expected growth in oil demand in the transport sector. Avoiding dangerous climate change The new outlook for China’s carbon dioxide emissions is welcome news for the world. If the double digit rates of heavy industry-fuelled economic growth and unprecedented levels of coal use seen in China during the first decade of this century were to continue, it would make it very difficult for the world to restrain global temperature increases to below 2C. The more realistic emissions trajectory that we forecast (modest, if any, increase in emissions with a peak somewhere in the decade before 2025) would, in contrast, mean the world has a fighting chance to achieve that goal.

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Extension – Chinese Emissions not significant (___)

(___)Chinese emissions and reduction commitments are not substantial enough to change Climate outcomes.

Lomborg, 16 BjØrn. , director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, (Feb. 2016), Impact of Current Climate Proposals. Global Policy, 7: 109–118. doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12295

China's INDC has made two significant promises (China INDC, 2015). One is a promise to peak its emissions around 2030. That is a promise, which will only start having a policy impact around and after 2030, which falls outside the 2030 time limit for policy promises set in this article.

The other promise seeks to reduce China's CO2 intensity by 60–65 per cent, compared to 2005. Unlike China's 2020 promise to reduce its CO2 intensity by 40–45 per cent, which was likely to be achieved even in the absence of climate policies (Calvin et al., 2012, s258; Calvin, Fawcett and Kejun, 2012, s311), this promise will likely lead to real emission cuts.

As baseline emissions, we will use the median of the Asia Modeling Exercise (Blanford, Rose and Tavoni, 2012), which involved 18 models. Using the median for GDP estimates, we find that without policy change, China will only reduce its CO2 intensity by 54 per cent by 2030. Reducing it to 60 per cent will require a further 1.9Gt CO2 emissions cut by 2030, being implemented linearly from 2016, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 10 shows the China INDC impact run on MAGICC. By 2100, it will result in a reduction in temperature rise of 0.048°C in the optimistic case and 0.014°C in the pessimistic case, with an average of 0.031°C.

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Extension- Paris Treaty Fails (___)

(__) The lack of real progress in the Paris agreement proves that global action won’t work.Boersma & Ebinger 16, Tim Boersma, fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Initiative, part of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings., Charles K. Ebinger senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at Brookings. He served as the initiative’s director from 2008 to October of 2014 1-27-2016, "When the champagne is finished: Why the post-Paris parade of climate euphoria is largely premature," Brookings Institution, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2016/01/27-cop21-paris-climate-agreement-boersma-ebinger

Incremental, not transformative, progress. Although important building blocks may have been put in place, we are not necessarily convinced that this is the break-through agreement which many have claimed it to be, and struggle with a number of key questions. First, are the current signals for the private sector sufficient to achieve the desired energy transition within the required timeframe? We observe that the agreement does not contain more than vague indications of desired GHG emissions reductions or energy pricing in the long term. Stronger language would have sent a clearer message that business as usual cannot continue. However, no such signal was sent. Instead, we have by and large agreed to business as usual until at least 2020. Of course, the Paris agreement does depict the political desire for change, but whether that is sufficient to make it happen remains to be seen.

(__) Paris was not a breakthrough – it was saving face. Cass, 2015, Oren Cass, "Climate Play-Acting", Manhattan Institute, 12-17-2015, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/climate-play-acting-8282.html

And so as negotiators worked late into the night, the haggling was not over how far to cut emissions. In fact, there was no negotiation over the emissions themselves. Instead, the U.S. fought with China and India over whether the latter two should even have to report transparently about their ever-rising emissions levels.

Defining the resolution of such issues as success is one way to achieve a successful negotiation. But celebrating the result as a breakthrough makes a mockery of the campaign to “act on climate” and insults the intelligence of millions of people. It’s as if President Kennedy had quietly revised his goal to be putting a man “on my lawn,” but a visit by astronauts to the Rose Garden earned men walk on moon headlines anyway.

At any time in the past 25 years, negotiators could have redefined their goal to be achieving something like Paris, and then quickly reached it. This is called saving face, not saving the world.

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http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2016/01/27-cop21-paris-climate-agreement-boersma-ebinger

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2016/01/27-cop21-paris-climate-agreement-boersma-ebinger


Climate Change is not Happening (___)

(___) Climate models show significantly less warming that the affirmative’s alarmist claims.

Michaels, 1-24-2016, Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist, is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute., "The Climate Snow Job", WSJ, 1-24-2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-snow-job-1453664732

Instead of relying on debatable surface-temperature information, consider instead readings in the free atmosphere (technically, the lower troposphere) taken by two independent sensors: satellite sounders and weather balloons. As has been shown repeatedly by University of Alabama climate scientist John Christy, since late 1978 (when the satellite record begins), the rate of warming in the satellite-sensed data is barely a third of what it was supposed to have been, according to the large family of global climate models now in existence. Balloon data, averaged over the four extant data sets, shows the same. It is therefore probably prudent to cut by 50% the modeled temperature forecasts for the rest of this century. Doing so would mean that the world—without any political effort at all—won’t warm by the dreaded 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 that the United Nations regards as the climate apocalypse.

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Climate Change is not Happening (___)

(___) The most reliable data does not showing an increase in warming.Kreutzer, Loris, Tubb and Dayaratna, 4-22-2016, David W. Kreutzer, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow for Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Nicolas D. Loris is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity. Katie Tubb is a Policy Analyst for the Roe Institute. Kevin D. Dayaratna, PhD, is Senior Statistician and Research Programmer in the Center for Data Analysis. "The State of Climate Science: No Justification for Extreme Policies", Heritage Foundation, 4-22-2016, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/04/the-state-of-climate-science-no-justification-for-extreme-policies

Taking the World’s Temperature. The use of different data temperature sets, whether it is global surface temperatures or satellite measurements, is one of the major points of contention in the climate debate. There is no perfect dataset for world temperature and no single thermometer that measures average annual world temperature. The NASA dataset, which declared 2015 as the warmest year on record, takes measurements from thousands of sites around the world. However, these sites do not provide even or comprehensive coverage of the Earth’s surface, nor are the sites immune to contamination from land-use changes—all of which add noise and uncertainty to the world temperature measurements.[30] Even the weather stations in the U.S., arguably the best of any country, have serious problems with data quality.[31]

Because of these quality and measurement issues, the keepers of these data employ a set of adjustments to address their many problems. However, such adjustments can introduce biases. A researcher that comes to the data compilations process with a preconceived notion that the world is warming may be eager to explain why the raw data shows no such temperature trend, and quick to accept a rationale for adjusting older temperatures down and more recent temperatures up. These are exactly the adjustments that have been made. Indeed, one investigator found that results from even the very best data stations (which should need the least adjustment) were adjusted to show greater warming.[32]

In recent years, the perceived need by global warming alarmists to adjust the data has increased dramatically. The leveling off of world temperatures in the unadjusted temperature record is in stark contrast to the accelerating warming forecast by the IPCC climate models. This hiatus in global warming has been an embarrassment to those who base their dire climate predictions on these poorly performing computer models.

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Climate Change is not catastrophic (___)

(___) Zero evidence of catastrophic climatic changes.Bell, 2016, Larry Bell, CFACT Advisor Larry Bell heads the graduate program in space architecture at the University of Houston. He founded and directs the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture., "Three facts prove climate alarm is a scam", Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, 5-31-2016, http://www.cfact.org/2016/05/31/three-facts-prove-climate-alarm-is-a-scam/

Contrary to prevalent fear-mongering, sea levels have been rising at a constant rate of barely 7 inches per century without any measured acceleration. Even the latest 2013 IPCC report states; “It is likely that GMSL [Global Mean Sea Level] rose between 1920 and 1950 at a rate comparable to that observed between 1993 and 2010.”

Periodic Arctic warming cycles have been reported by whalers and explorers dating back centuries. Alpine glaciers at Glacier National Park have been receding since the little ice age ended. (Incidentally, polar bear populations are now at a record high.)

As for the sensationalized melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, a British Antarctic Survey reported that this is “within the natural range of climate variability” over the past 300 years, and that “more dramatic isotopic warming (and cooling) trends occurred in the mid-19th and 18th centuries.” Overall, the Antarctic ice mass has been steadily growing since first recorded by NASA satellites in 1979. The 2013-2014 expanses exceeded all previous measurements.

Regarding that “extreme weather” we’ve been warned about, no category 3-5 hurricanes have struck the U.S. coast since October 2005, setting a record lull since 1900. Both NOAA and the IPCC have admitted that there has been no increase in the severity or frequency of droughts, floods, thunderstorms, or tornadoes in decades. Nor has the number of U.S. wildfires increased.

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Answers To: Fast Climate Increase (___)

(___) Even if climate change is happening, new studies prove a weaker cooling effect from aerosols than previously understood, which means warming won’t be that bad.Bastasch, 2016, Michael covers energy and the environment at the Daily Caller News Foundation. 6-9-2016, "New warming study devastates alarmist claims," Cfact, http://www.cfact.org/2016/06/09/new-warming-study-devastates-alarmist-claims/

A major scientific study conducted at the University of Reading on the interactions between aerosols and clouds is much weaker than most climate models assume, meaning the planet could warm way less than predicted.

“Currently, details are few, but apparently the results of a major scientific study on the effects of anthropogenic aerosols on clouds are going to have large implications for climate change projections—substantially lowering future temperature rise expectations,” Cato Institute climate scientists Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger wrote in a recent blog post.

Michaels and Knappenberger, both self-described “lukewarmers,” cited a blog post by Reading scientist Dr. Nicolas Bellouin on the preliminary results of his extensive research into this rather vague area of climate science.

Bellouin wrote “there are reasons to expect that aerosol-cloud interactions are weaker than simulated by climate models – and perhaps even weaker than the preliminary… estimate.”

If Bellouin’s preliminary results hold (or are revised downward), that would mean there’s less of a cooling effect from human-created aerosols interacting with clouds, which morph clouds so they bounce incoming solar energy back into space.

“It may be that aerosol-cloud interactions are lost in the noise of natural variability in cloud properties, but for such a large perturbation, the impacts are surprisingly hard to isolate,” Bellouin wrote.

For decades, scientists assumed aerosols — mostly emitted from coal plants, shipping, car travel and other industrial sources — had a sizable cooling effect on the planet, but that might not be the case. More importantly, however, is the fact that if aerosols don’t have much of a cooling effect, the planet is not as sensitive to increases in greenhouse gas emissions. That means less warming.

“Less enhanced cloud cooling means that greenhouse gases have produced less warming than the climate models have determined,” Michaels and Knappenberger wrote.

“Another way to put it is that this new finding implies that the earth’s climate sensitivity—how much the earth’s surface will warm from a doubling of the pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration—is much below that of the average climate model (3.2°C) and near the low end of the IPCC’s 1.5°C to 4.5°C assessed range,” they added.

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http://www.cfact.org/2016/06/09/new-warming-study-devastates-alarmist-claims/


Answers To Scientific Consensus (___)

(___) The consensus of scientists agree that climate change is real, not that it will be catastrophic.Legates, 2016, David Legates, Prof. of Climatology at the University of Delaware, "Deep-sixing another useful climate myth", CFAT, 4-10-2016, http://www.cfact.org/2016/04/10/deep-sixing-another-useful-climate-myth/

Similarly, several “polls” have attempted to quantify the supposed climate change consensus, often by using simplistic bait-and-switch tactics. “Do you believe in climate change?” they may ask.

Answering yes, as I would, places you in the President’s 97% consensus and, by illogical extension, implies you agree it is caused by humans and will be dangerous. Of course, that serves their political goal of gaining more control over energy use.

(___) Check your sources, the 97% number they love to quote is based off of a faulty methodLegates continues

The most recent 97% claim was posited by John Cook and colleagues in 2013. They evaluated abstracts from nearly 12,000 articles published over a 21-year period and sorted them into seven categories, ranging from “explicit, quantified endorsement” to “explicit, quantified rejection” of their alleged consensus: that recent warming was caused by human activity, not by natural variability. They concluded that “97.1% endorsed the consensus position.”

However, two-thirds of all those abstracts took no position on anthropogenic climate change. Of the remaining abstracts (not the papers or scientists), Cook and colleagues asserted that 97.1% endorsed their hypothesis that humans are the sole cause of recent global warming.

Again, the bait-and-switch was on full display. Any assertion that humans play a role was interpreted as meaning humans are the sole cause. But many of those scientists subsequently said publicly that Cook and colleagues had misclassified their papers – and Cook never tried to assess whether any of the scientists who wrote the papers actually thought the observed climate changes were dangerous.

My own colleagues and I did investigate their analysis more closely. We found that only 41 abstracts of the 11,944 papers Cook and colleagues reviewed – a whopping 0.3% – actually endorsed their supposed consensus. It turns out they had decided that any paper which did not provide an explicit, quantified rejection of their supposed consensus was in agreement with the consensus. Moreover, this decision was based solely on Cook and colleagues’ interpretation of just the abstracts, and not the articles themselves. In other words, the entire exercise was a clever sleight-of-hand trick.

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Answers To: Consensus (___)

(___) No consensus on climate science. Their 97Kreutzer, Loris, Tubb and Dayaratna, 4-22-2016, David W. Kreutzer, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow for Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. Nicolas D. Loris is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Roe Institute. Kevin D. Dayaratna, PhD, is Senior Statistician and Research Programmer in the Center for Data Analysis. "The State of Climate Science: No Justification for Extreme Policies", Heritage Foundation, 4-22-2016, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/04/the-state-of-climate-science-no-justification-for-extreme-policies

The figure comes from a 2013 Cook et al. study in Environmental Research Letters that examines the abstracts of nearly 12,000 academic papers on climate change and global warming between 1991–2011. Of those papers, 66.4 percent expressed no opinion on anthropogenic warming, 32.6 percent “endorsed” anthropogenic warming, 0.7 percent rejected anthropogenic warming, and 0.3 percent were unsure of the cause.[3] Of the 33.6 percent expressing an opinion on man-made global warming, “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”[4] Importantly, the claim says nothing about urgency or danger.

Cook’s paper was the subject of much criticism. Richard Tol, a professor at the University of Sussex, warned that “[t]his claim, frequently repeated in debates about climate policy, does not stand. A trend in composition is mistaken for a trend in endorsement. Reported results are inconsistent and biased. The sample is not representative and contains many irrelevant papers. Overall, data quality is low.”[5] David R. Legates, former director of University of Delaware’s Center for Climatic Research, along with three other researchers, analyzed the same set of papers in the Cook study. They found that a mere 0.3 percent of all papers, or 1 percent of the 4,014 papers expressing an opinion on the matter, claim that the majority of warming since 1950 is man-made.[6]

Further, the Cook et al. study is misleading as to what there is consensus on and glosses over major points of uncertainty and disagreement in the scientific community. To be clear, Cook et al. do not attempt to quantify how much global warming is man-made, or even say that man-made emissions contribute to the majority of global warming. The specific or even generalized amount of warming caused by anthropogenic emissions, according to Cook’s study, is undetermined. Furthermore, the search terms Cook used to aggregate the climate papers exclude research papers from climate “skeptics,” such as MIT atmospheric physicist and former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor Dr. Richard Lindzen.[7] The 97 percent statistic is nothing more than a false talking point; no overwhelming consensus exists among climatologists on the magnitude of future warming or on the urgency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Climate Science is Biased (___)

(___) The threat of climate change is wildly exaggerated because organizations have an incentive to sound alarm.

Ridley 2015, Matt Ridley is an English science journalist whose books include The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. A member of the House of Lords, 6-19-2015, "The Climate Wars’ Damage to Science," Quadrant Online, https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/06/climate-wars-done-science/

This is precisely what has happened with the climate debate and it is at risk of damaging the whole reputation of science. The “bad idea” in this case is not that climate changes, nor that human beings influence climate change; but that the impending change is sufficiently dangerous to require urgent policy responses. In the 1970s, when global temperatures were cooling, some scientists could not resist the lure of press attention by arguing that a new ice age was imminent. Others called this nonsense and the World Meteorological Organisation rightly refused to endorse the alarm. That’s science working as it should. In the 1980s, as temperatures began to rise again, some of the same scientists dusted off the greenhouse effect and began to argue that runaway warming was now likely.

At first, the science establishment reacted sceptically and a diversity of views was aired. It’s hard to recall now just how much you were allowed to question the claims in those days. As Bernie Lewin reminds us in one chapter of a fascinating new book of essays called Climate Change: The Facts (hereafter The Facts), as late as 1995 when the second assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out with its last-minute additional claim of a “discernible human influence” on climate, Nature magazine warned scientists against overheating the debate.

Since then, however, inch by inch, the huge green pressure groups have grown fat on a diet of constant but ever-changing alarm about the future. That these alarms—over population growth, pesticides, rain forests, acid rain, ozone holes, sperm counts, genetically modified crops—have often proved wildly exaggerated does not matter: the organisations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money. In the case of climate, the alarm is always in the distant future, so can never be debunked.

These huge green multinationals, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have now systematically infiltrated science, as well as industry and media, with the result that many high-profile climate scientists and the journalists who cover them have become one-sided cheerleaders for alarm, while a hit squad of increasingly vicious bloggers polices the debate to ensure that anybody who steps out of line is punished. They insist on stamping out all mention of the heresy that climate change might not be lethally dangerous.

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(__) Climate research is politically driven and limits out any dissenting voices.

Kreutzer, et al 2016, David W. Kreutzer, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow for Energy Economics and Climate Change in the Center for Data Analysis, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Nicolas D. Loris is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity. Katie Tubb is a Policy Analyst for the Roe Institute. Kevin D. Dayaratna, PhD, is Senior Statistician and Research Programmer in the Center for Data Analysis. "The State of Climate Science: No Justification for Extreme Policies", Heritage Foundation, 4-22-2016, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/04/the-state-of-climate-science-no-justification-for-extreme-policies

Biases in Climate Research. There is increasing concern that climate science and scientific reviews are no longer truly independent. The state of climate science should be concerning to everyone, regardless of where scientific evidence leads and how policymakers choose to act on scientific knowledge. The IPCC has had a powerful role in defining the scientific and political conversation and conclusions about global warming, especially through its guide for policymakers. Its prematurely declared “consensus” that global warming is dangerous, accelerating, and instigated by carbon dioxide (CO2) has had a far-reaching influence, conflating scientific research with certain economic, energy, agricultural, and social policies. Many scientists and scientific institutions consequently have become quasi-political lobbies.[8] The U.S. is not insulated from the political biasing of climate science; in fact, it actively contributes to it. U.S. taxpayers help fund the IPCC, having contributed $10 million in 2015,[9] in addition to the $22 billion spent within federal agencies.[10] Rather than fostering scientific discovery in a field that is a mere few decades old, the U.S. government instead appears to express bias in funding science that supports federal climate policies.[11] And while there has been relatively little comprehensive study into the government’s potential conflict of interest, there have been numerous personal reports of government bias in climate research. As Dr. Judith Curry, climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences of the Georgia Institute of Technology, recently testified before Congress: I recently received [an e-mail] from a scientist employed at NASA: “I was at a small meeting of NASA-affiliated scientists and was told by our top manager that he was told by his NASA boss that we should not try to publish papers contrary to the current global warming claims, because he (the NASA boss) would then have a headache countering the ‘undesirable’ publicity.”[12]

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(___) Bias in climate science amplifies the errors.

Wojick and Michaels, 2015, Dr. David E. Wojick holds a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science and mathematical logic. His firm, David E. Wojick Associates, specializes in consulting at the nexus of science, technology and policy; Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Cato Institute Center for the Study of Science., "Is the Government Buying Science or Support? A Framework Analysis of Federal Funding-induced Biases", Cato Institute, 4-30-2015, http://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/government-buying-science-or-support-framework-analysis-federal-funding

A simple, and perhaps common, example of amplification might be when the hype in a press release is exaggerated in a news story. Let’s say the press release overstates the importance of the research result, but with some qualification. The news story then reports the result as a great breakthrough, far more strongly than the press release, ignoring the latter’s qualifications. In this way the original bias has been amplified. Cascading amplification when one biased activity is followed by multiple instances of amplification. Using our example, suppose a single biased press release generates many different news stories, which vie with one another for exaggeration. This one-to-many amplification is properly termed a cascade. Moreover, there is the possibility of cascading amplification on a very large scale and over multiple biased stages. Here is an example of how it might work. 1) An agency receives biased funding for research from Congress. 2) They issue multiple biased Requests for Proposals (RFPs), and 3) multiple biased projects are selected for each RFP. 4) Many projects produce multiple biased articles, press releases, etc, 5) many of these articles and releases generate multiple biased news stories, and 6) the resulting amplified bias is communicated to the public on a large scale. One can see how in this instance a single funding activity, the agency budget, might eventually lead to hundreds or thousands of hyperbolic news stories. This would be a very large scale cascading amplification of funding-induced bias. Climate Change Examples In the climate change debate there have been allegations of bias at each of the stages described above. Taken together this suggests the possibility that just such a large scale amplifying cascade has occurred or is occurring. Systematic research is needed to determine if this is actually the case. The notion of cascading systemic bias, induced by government funding, does not appear to have been studied much. This may be a big gap in research on science. Moreover, if this sort of bias is indeed widespread then there are serious implications for new policies, both at the Federal level and within the scientific community itself.

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Too Late to Solve Climate (___)

(___) Carbon Emissions have already hit the 400 parts per million threshold, there’s no turning back.

King 2016, Ed Editor of @ClimateHome, 6-13-2016, "World 'beyond return' of historic carbon dioxide milestone," Climate Home - climate change news, http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/06/13/world-beyond-return-of-historic-carbon-dioxide-milestone/

The past 12 months have seen a record surge in carbon dioxide emissions say scientists, driven by the burning of fossil fuels and boosted by a rampant El Nino phenomenon. Tropical forests and plants that once would have been expected to reduce global CO2 levels by September have suffered badly under this El Nino, reducing their ability to soak up carbon. That means the iconic milestone of 400 parts of carbon dioxide in every million molecules of air has likely been passed for good, says a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Despite a new UN climate pact agreed by 195 countries, the findings raise serious questions about the pace of efforts to slow global warming in what is set to be the hottest year on record. “It’s a sign we are still on track for a high emissions scenario. We won’t be looking at below 400ppm in our lifetimes,” said Richard Betts, one of the authors and scientist at the UK Met Office.

The study is based on readings from the Mauna Loa meterological station in Hawaii, where measurements of CO2 date back to 1958. A naturally occurring weather event every 5-7 years, El Nino is linked with hotter global air temperatures and a surge in greenhouse gas emissions. The fact emissions rose faster than usual, Betts told Climate Home, was no surprise. Higher CO2 rates are expected as El Nino warms and dries tropical land areas, slowing the uptake of carbon by trees and plants, and increasing the risks of forest fires. What their study also revealed is that the vast forest fires in Indonesia through 2015 and 2016 may have contributed around 20% of El Nino’s 1ppm addition to global carbon emissions.

If and when the world continues to warm as the UN’s climate science panel predicts it will based on current rates of warming gases, the threat of more fires at that scale could rise. The study, said Betts, shows scientists are getting better at understanding the role of the carbon cycle, and the importance of vegetation growth in regulating emission levels. But for many following the debate over climate change slowly, the sight of 400ppm in their rear-view mirror will just be another sign of the global failure to move away from fossil fuels.

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Too Little Change To Solve (___)

(___) Proposed emissions cuts are insufficient to effect climate change.Lomborg, 2016

BjØrn. , director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, (Feb. 2016), Impact of Current Climate Proposals. Global Policy, 7: 109–118. doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12295

Based on climate model simulations, the emission cuts that have been proposed by the US, the EU, China and the RoW [Rest of the World] will reduce temperature increases by the end of the century, but almost all of the expected warming will still take place by 2100.

Because the climate policy impacts from individual countries are almost additive, they can be almost perfectly partitioned as is evidenced in Table 1. This shows that in the optimistic case, the EU and China each reduce mean global temperature by 2100 of about 0.05°C, and the US and the RoW each reducing a bit more than 0.03°C.

Table 1. Impact of climate policies, optimistic and pessimistic, for RCP8.5, using MAGICC, summary of finds described throughout the text

Change in temperature

°C year 2100

Pessimistic Optimistic

US INDC 0.008 0.031

US CPP 0.004 0.013

EU INDC 0.017 0.053

EU 2020 0.007 0.026

China INDC 0.014 0.048

RoW INDC 0.009 0.036

Global INDCs 0.048 0.170

As Wigley (1998) found for the Kyoto Protocol, the emissions reductions promised until 2030 will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades. This clearly indicates that if we want to reduce climate impacts significantly, we will have to find better ways than the ones currently proposed.

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Answers To: The effects of climate change are too big to ignore (___)

(___) Their worst case scenarios are unsubstantiated alarmism – the best evidence demonstrates that it’s not as bad as we thought.Lomborg, 2015,

BjØrn. director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, (2015, Feb 02). The alarming thing about climate alarmism. Wall Street Journal Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/docview/1650074087?accountid=7107

It is an indisputable fact that carbon emissions are rising -- and faster than most scientists predicted. But many climate-change alarmists seem to claim that all climate change is worse than expected. This ignores that much of the data are actually encouraging. The latest study from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that in the previous 15 years temperatures had risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit. The average of all models expected 0.8 degrees. So we're seeing about 90% less temperature rise than expected.

Facts like this are important because a one-sided focus on worst-case stories is a poor foundation for sound policies. Yes, Arctic sea ice is melting faster than the models expected. But models also predicted that Antarctic sea ice would decrease, yet it is increasing. Yes, sea levels are rising, but the rise is not accelerating -- if anything, two recent papers, one by Chinese scientists published in the January 2014 issue of Global and Planetary Change, and the other by U.S. scientists published in the May 2013 issue of Coastal Engineering, have shown a small decline in the rate of sea-level increase. We are often being told that we're seeing more and more droughts, but a study published last March in the journal Nature actually shows a decrease in the world's surface that has been afflicted by droughts since 1982.

Hurricanes are likewise used as an example of the "ever worse" trope. If we look at the U.S., where we have the best statistics, damage costs from hurricanes are increasing -- but only because there are more people, with more-expensive property, living near coastlines. If we adjust for population and wealth, hurricane damage during the period 1900-2013 decreased slightly.

At the U.N. climate conference in Lima, Peru, in December, attendees were told that their countries should cut carbon emissions to avoid future damage from storms like typhoon Hagupit, which hit the Philippines during the conference, killing at least 21 people and forcing more than a million into shelters. Yet the trend for landfalling typhoons around the Philippines has actually declined since 1950, according to a study published in 2012 by the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate. Again, we're told that things are worse than ever, but the facts don't support this. This is important because if we want to help the poor people who are most threatened by natural disasters, we have to recognize that it is less about cutting carbon emissions than it is about pulling them out of poverty.

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CO2 helps Agriculture (___)

(___) Carbon dioxide increases plant growth, including crop yields and biodiversity.

Goklany, 2015Indur Goklany was a member of the US delegation that established the IPCC. He is a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council. Carbon Dioxide: The good news. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, October 2015. http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf.

1. This paper addresses the question of whether, and how much, increased carbon dioxide concentrations have benefited the biosphere and humanity by stimulating plant growth, warming the planet and increasing rainfall. 2. Empirical data confirms that the biosphere’s productivity has increased by about 14% since 1982, in large part as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels. 3. Thousands of scientific experiments indicate that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have contributed to increases in crop yields. 4. These increases in yield are very likely to have reduced the appropriation of land for farming by 11–17% compared with what it would otherwise be, resulting in more land being left wild. 5. Satellite evidence confirms that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations have also resulted in greater productivity of wild terrestrial ecosystems in all vegetation types. 6. Increasing carbon dioxide concentrations have also increased the productivity of many marine ecosystems. 7. In recent decades, trends in climate-sensitive indicators of human and environmental wellbeing have improved and continue to do so despite claims that they would deteriorate because of global warming. 8. Compared with the benefits from carbon dioxide on crop and biosphere productivity, the adverse impacts of carbon dioxide – on the frequency and intensity of extreme weather, on sea level, vector-borne disease prevalence and human health – have been too small to measure or have been swamped by other factors. 9. Models used to influence policy on climate change have overestimated the rate of warming, underestimated direct benefits of carbon dioxide, overestimated the harms from climate change and underestimated human capacity to adapt so as to capture the benefits while reducing the harms. 10. It is very likely that the impact of rising carbon dioxide concentrations is currently net beneficial for both humanity and the biosphere generally. These benefits are real, whereas the costs of warming are uncertain. Halting the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations abruptly would deprive people and the planet of the benefits of carbon dioxide much sooner than they would reduce any costs of warming.

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(___) The latest studies prove that CO2 is a fertilizer.Lomborg, 2016, BjØRn Lomborg director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center,, "No one ever says it, but in many ways global warming will be a good thing", Telegraph, 5-5-2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/05/no-one-ever-says-it-but-in-many-ways-global-warming-will-be-a-go/

Last week, a study in the prestigious journal Nature revealed just how much CO2 increases have greened the Earth over the past three decades. Because CO2 acts as a fertilizer, as much as half of all vegetated land is persistently greener today. This ought to be a cause for great joy. Instead, the BBC focused on warning that the paper shouldn’t make us stop worrying about global warming, with threats like melting glaciers and more severe tropical storms. Many other major news outlets did not even report on the study. “As global warming pushes temperatures up, more people will die in heat wave. What we don’t hear is that fewer people will die from cold.” Our climate conversation is lopsided. There is ample room to suggest that climate change has caused this problem or that negative outcome, but any mention of positives is frowned upon. We have known for decades that increasing CO2 and precipitation from global warming will make the world much greener – by the end of the century, it is likely that global biomass will have increased by forty percent.

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(___) Increased CO2 massively increase crop yields.Idso, 2014, Craig D. Idso, PhD. Geography, ASU, founder, former president and current chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change "Pope Francis, Fossil Fuels Won't Cause Armageddon", Cato Institute, 9-18-2014, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/pope-francis-fossil-fuels-wont-cause-armageddon

Concerning such benefits, it is a well-established fact that atmospheric CO2 is the major building block of nearly all life, as it is used by plants in the process of photosynthesis to construct their tissues and grow. As numerous scientific studies have conclusively demonstrated, the more CO2 there is in the air, the better plants grow . They produce greater amounts of biomass, become more efficient in using water, and are better able to cope with environmental stresses such as pollution, drought, salinity, and high temperatures.

The implications of these benefits to society are enormous. One study , for example, calculated that over the 50-year period of 1961 to 2010, the direct monetary benefits atmospheric CO2 enrichment conferred on global crop production amounted to a staggering $3.2 trillion. Projecting this positive externality forward in time reveals it will likely bestow an additional $9.8 trillion in crop production benefits between now and 2050.

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Answers To: Climate hurts Agriculture (___)

(___) Advances in genetically modified agriculture resolve climate stress on agriculture.Heikkinen, 2016 Niina reporter with ClimateWire, 3-8-2016, "Genetically Engineered Crops Are Safe and Possibly Good for Climate Change," Scientific American, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetically-engineered-crops-are-safe-and-possibly-good-for-climate-change/

Supporters of the technology say genetically engineered, or GE, crops are necessary for meeting the nutritional demands of a growing global population. Opponents say that the crops could pose environmental and health risks, particularly over the long term. Currently, most of the genetically modified crops commercially available have added traits that protect plants from pests and make them resistant to herbicides. But in the future, the technology could be used more to address crop vulnerabilities to climate change, by incorporating traits for drought resistance and for heat and cold tolerance, according to the report. “Climate change will affect both the yields and the quality of produce in a number of ways. Increased temperatures will speed crop development and thus limit potential yields. In colder climates, increased temperatures may extend the growing season, particularly of crops with indeterminate growth such as cotton,” the committee members wrote. Genetic engineering approaches could be used along with conventional breeding and changes in farm management to help plants better survive environmental changes, they said. A major challenge is that adding traits like heat tolerance is much more complex than altering a single gene to make a plant herbicide-resistant, said Richard Amasino, a member of the NAS committee. “If we had the basic knowledge to enable corn to grow at higher temperatures, then we’ve got a buffer to climate change. But do we understand the basic biochemistry of how that might work? No. There is no one magic little protein you put in. So these are all very complex issues. Basically, as we go to more complex biochemical things, we’re going to have to have a lot more knowledge, and there is going to be a physiological limit,” Amasino said. To help close that knowledge gap, committee members called for continued public funding of basic research for better understanding of the “physiological, biochemical and molecular basis of these important traits.” They also noted that any benefits from the research would depend on the amount of social, political and economic support for genetic engineering.

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Answers To: Climate hurts Agriculture (___)

(___) Genetic modifications limit the effects of climate change on food production.Rotman 2013, David editor of MIT Technology Review 12-17-2013, "Why We Will Need Genetically Modified Foods," MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/522596/why-we-will-need-genetically-modified-foods/

With the global population expected to reach more than nine billion by 2050, however, the world might soon be hungry for such varieties. Although agricultural productivity has improved dramatically over the past 50 years, economists fear that these improvements have begun to wane at a time when food demand, driven by the larger number of people and the growing appetites of wealthier populations, is expected to rise between 70 and 100 percent by midcentury. In particular, the rapid increases in rice and wheat yields that helped feed the world for decades are showing signs of slowing down, and production of cereals will need to more than double by 2050 to keep up. If the trend continues, production might be insufficient to meet demand unless we start using significantly more land, fertilizer, and water. Climate change is likely to make the problem far worse, bringing higher temperatures and, in many regions, wetter conditions that spread infestations of disease and insects into new areas. Drought, damaging storms, and very hot days are already taking a toll on crop yields, and the frequency of these events is expected to increase sharply as the climate warms. For farmers, the effects of climate change can be simply put: the weather has become far more unpredictable, and extreme weather has become far more common.

The central highlands of Mexico, for example, experienced their driest and wettest years on record back to back in 2011 and 2012, says Matthew Reynolds, a wheat physiologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in El Batán. Such variation is “worrisome and very bad for agriculture,” he says. “It’s extremely challenging to breed for it. If you have a relatively stable climate, you can breed crops with genetic characteristics that follow a certain profile of temperatures and rainfall. As soon as you get into a state of flux, it’s much more difficult to know what traits to target.” One advantage of using genetic engineering to help crops adapt to these sudden changes is that new varieties can be created quickly. Creating a potato variety through conventional breeding, for example, takes at least 15 years; producing a genetically modified one takes less than six months. Genetic modification also allows plant breeders to make more precise changes and draw from a far greater variety of genes, gleaned from the plants’ wild relatives or from different types of organisms. Plant scientists are careful to note that no magical gene can be inserted into a crop to make it drought tolerant or to increase its yield—even resistance to a disease typically requires multiple genetic changes. But many of them say genetic engineering is a versatile and essential technique.

“It’s an overwhelmingly logical thing to do,” says Jonathan Jones, a scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory in the U.K. and one of the world’s leading experts on plant diseases. The upcoming pressures on agricultural production, he says, “[are] real and will affect millions of people in poor countries.” He adds that it would be “perverse to spurn using genetic modification as a tool.”

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Answers To: Climate hurts Biodiversity (___)

(___) Forecasts of species loss have been overestimated.

Bojanowski 2014, Axel geologist and worked as a science journalist since 1997, 3-26-2014, "UN Backtracks: Will Global Warming Really Trigger Mass Extinctions?," Spiegel Online, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/new-un-climate-report-casts-doubt-on-earlier-extinction-predictions-a-960569.html

Humans have shrunk the habitats of many life forms, through unsustainable agriculture, fishing or hunting. And it is going to get even worse. Global warming is said to be threatening thousands of animal and plant species with extinction. That, at least, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting for years.

But the UN climate body now says it is no longer so certain. The second part of the IPCC's new assessment report is due to be presented next Monday in Yokohama, Japan. On the one hand, a classified draft of the report notes that a further "increased extinction risk for a substantial number of species during and beyond the 21st century" is to be expected. On the other hand, the IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far.

'Crocodile Tears' At most, the draft report says, climate change may have played a role in the disappearance of a few amphibians, fresh water fish and mollusks. Yet even the icons of catastrophic global warming, the polar bears, are doing surprisingly well. Their population has remained stable despite the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap.

Ragnar Kinzelbach, a zoologist at the University of Rostock, says essential data is missing for most other life forms, making it virtually impossible to forecast the potential effects of climate change. Given the myriad other human encroachments in the natural environment, Kinzelbach says, "crocodile tears over an animal kingdom threatened by climate change are less than convincing."

The draft report includes a surprising admission by the IPCC -- that it doubts its own computer simulations for species extinctions. "There is very little confidence that models currently predict extinction risk accurately," the report notes. Very low extinction rates despite considerable climate variability during past hundreds of thousands of years have led to concern that "forecasts for very high extinction rates due entirely to climate change may be overestimated."

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Answers To: Climate Wars (___)

(___) There’s no conclusive data on the link between Climate change and war.Buhaug, 2015, Halvard Buhaug, Research Director and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute, "Reflections on climate-conflict research: More confusion than knowledge", Carbon Brief, 2-6-2016, http://www.carbonbrief.org/reflections-on-climate-conflict-research-more-confusion-than-knowledge

Does climate change constitute a threat to peace and security? Many agree that it does. The US administration’s new National Security Strategy, launched last month, portrays climate change as ‘an urgent and growing threat.’ And this week, a new study appears to add scientific credibility to this concern, suggesting human-caused climate change contributed to the drought that preceded the Syrian civil war. So does the Syrian case represent a general pattern, where climate changes and extremes are systematically increasing conflict risk? The short answer is no. But if scientists want to explore these links more closely, there are a few steps they need to take. Cacophony of different findings Recent research has reported a strong effect of climate extremes on violent conflict, yet many researchers question the robustness of such a link. Some even argue the relationship between climate and conflict is so complex that it can never fully be captured and understood. There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the impacts of climate change on security. However, a decade of research into the area appears to have produced more confusion than knowledge. But the cacophony of different findings and inadequate scientific evidence could be the result of poor data and simplistic research designs, rather than because no relationship exists. In trying to establish links that can be observed and quantified, I see five key challenges that need to be addressed.

Poor data and vague hypotheses The first challenge is to move away from grouping all impacts of climate change under the same banner. We should specify which climate condition or event we consider a security threat, and what the implications could be. There is no reason why we should expect a flood to have the same impact on social behavior as the early arrival of the rainy season or a particularly wet year. Yet poor data and vague hypotheses seem to suggest that these distinct phenomena often look similar, and are treated as such. Second, researchers should avoid the naive assumption of a simple and direct cause-and-effect link between climate and conflict. We should specify how a climatic condition could cause social unrest directly, or how they could contribute to existing problems. In general, there is a tendency to underestimate or outright ignore the importance of the role of government or other institutions. For example, could local food price shocks constitute an intermediate step between drought and conflict? Possibly, but a failed harvest might not lead to food shortages or price rises if the situation is managed by a competent government.

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http://www.carbonbrief.org/reflections-on-climate-conflict-research-more-confusion-than-knowledge


Answers To: Climate Wars (___)

(___) No evidence of a link between conflict and climate.Montford, 2016Andrew,. writer and blogger specialising in climate change issues. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, April 2016. http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2016/04/parched-earth-policy.pdf.

In fact the whole idea of climate change conflict has been described by one expert as a ‘myth’: History shows that ‘warm’ periods are more peaceful than ‘cold’ ones. In the modern era, the evolution of the climate is not an essential factor to explain collective violence. Nothing indicates that ‘water wars’ or floods of ‘climate refugees’ are on the horizon. And to claim that climate change may have an impact on security is to state the obvious but it does not make it meaningful for defense planning.45 The dichotomy of ecologists and conflict researchers can be seen everywhere in the field. Recently, climatologist Colin Kelley has linked the Syrian conflict to global warming,46 his findings based on ‘[c]entury-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results’.

However, Francesca de Châtel, an expert in water conflict in the Middle East who was for many years based in Damascus, has noted that droughts are common in Syria, and that many are severe but do not cause conflict. Moreover, the same drought that is alleged to have caused the Syrian uprising also affected many other countries in the region, apparently without ill-effects.47 Noting that the Syrian crisis predated the drought, she finds the cause of the conflict to lie more with government policy measures and policy failures. She suggests that attempts to link it to climate change are unhelpful: The role of climate change is not only irrelevant, even emphasizing it is damaging.48 And even some climatologists have taken a stand against the claims made by Kelley. In a newspaper article, prominent climatologist Mike Hulme and international relations expert Jan Selby described the attempts to link the Syrian crisis to climate change as ‘misguided’.49 They also point out that earlier attempts to link conflicts to climate change have fallen apart in the face of rigorous analysis of the data: In fact we have been here before. In 2007, it was Darfur that was being portrayed as a ‘climate war’, after Ban Ki-moon’s contention: ‘The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis arising at least in part from climate change’. This thesis has since been roundly dismissed by a host of academic studies that have shown, among other things, that the war could not have been caused by drought because rainfall levels in Darfur increased prior to the start of the war. However, recognising that both sides at least agree that climate is not a primary cause of conflict, it must surely make more sense to focus on those causes that both sides agree are important. As Andrew Solow of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has put it: If we want to reduce the level of violence in other places, then it would be more efficient ... to bring people out of abject poverty, to provide them with the technology that loosens the connection between climate and survival, to reduce corruption, and so forth, rather than on preventing climate change. I sometimes have the feeling that some people only care about human suffering if it can be traced to climate change.50 But perhaps the last word should go to science writer John Horgan, who, in reviewing the state of the field, observed that environmentalists should take care when warning of climate-fuelled conflict, since the result is likely to be higher military spending rather than lower carbon dioxide emissions.51

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Answers To: Climate hurts Economy (___)

(___)Reducing emissions is far worse for economic growth than climate change.Oren Cass, 11-30-2015, Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute., "Staying Below 2 Degrees Is Hopeless (Without War)", Bloomberg View, 11-30-2015, http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-11-30/eight-ways-to-save-the-planet

However compelling the arguments for holding global warming below 2 degrees, here's the problem: Doing so is plainly incompatible with the economic aspirations of the developing world. Even if rich nations halted emissions tomorrow, other countries would need to slash emissions by half immediately and hold there indefinitely.

That course would preclude rapid economic growth, which is why developing nations are refusing to contemplate it. Despite impressive progress, low-carbon technologies remain nowhere near capable of providing affordable, baseload power at the scale require d. Instead, the world is currently experiencing a “Renaissance of Coal.” To keep developing nations on board, international negotiations have long since abandoned carbon pricing or even the basic requirement of reducing emissions. The emissions “commitments” of many large developing nations amount to only a continuation of existing trajectories.

If the West believed combatting climate change merits hobbling poorer countries against their will, it could coerce emissions cuts with threats of embargo or military force . Obviously, that should not and will not happen. But without it, dramatic cuts depend on as-yet-unidentified technological breakthroughs that a developing economy might prefer to fossil fuels. Success is by no means guaranteed, but the best chance will come if focus shifts from today's wind farms and solar panels to spurring whatever innovations might come next.

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(___) The cost to meet Paris goals will be over trillion dollars year, slowing the world economy and trapping millions in poverty.Lomborg, 2015, BjØrn, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, Nov 17. “Gambling the world economy on climate.” Wall Street Journal Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/docview/1733389054?accountid=7107

The EU says it will cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Again, there is no official estimate of the cost given, which is extraordinary. The data from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum suggests hitting that target would reduce the EU's GDP by 1.6% in 2030, or 287 billion euros in 2010 money.

Mexico has put into place the strongest climate legislation of any developing country, conditionally promising to cut greenhouse-gas and black-carbon emissions by 40% below the current trend line by 2030. The Mexican government estimates that cutting emissions in half by 2050 will cost between $6 billion and $33 billion in 2005 money, but that is many times too low. Peer-reviewed literature, supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the EU, suggests that by 2030 the cost would already reach 4.5% of GDP, or $80 billion in 2005 money.

China has promised by 2030 to reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions, per unit of GDP, to at least 60% below 2005. Using the data from the Asia Modeling Exercise we find that hitting this target will cost at least $200 billion a year. So in total, the Paris promises of the EU, Mexico, U.S. and China will diminish the economy at least $730 billion a year by 2030 -- and that is in an ideal world, where politicians consistently reduce emissions in the most effective ways.

Experience tells us that won’t happen. For instance, policy makers could have chipped away at emissions efficiently with modest taxes on carbon, or by switching electrical generation to natural gas. Instead many countries, including the U.S. and those in the EU, have poured money into phenomenally inefficient subsidies for solar and biofuels, which politicians go for like catnip. The EU’s 20/20 climate policy—the goal, embarked upon in 2010, to cut emissions 20% from 1990 levels by 2020—is the clearest example of such gross inefficiency.

A 2009 study of the targets, published in Energy Economics, estimated that “inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100-125% too high.” It’s likely that in the future even more money will be wasted propping up green energy that is both unaffordable and inefficient.

Another 127 nations have made promises for Paris that increase the total emissions cuts by one-fourth. The cuts on the table in Paris, then, will leave the global economy, in rough terms, $1 trillion short every year for the rest of the century—and that’s if the politicians do everything right. If not, the real cost could double.

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(___) Decarbonization is so expensive that we would be better off spending the money to solve poverty.Kelly, 2016, M. J Kelly Professor Electrical Engineering Division , Department of Engineering , University of Cambridge. “Lesson from Technology Development for Energy and Sustainability.” MRS Energy & Sustainability : A Review Journal 3 (2016). Available: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/252666.

Although the mantra ‘think global, act local’ is called upon to justify the local efforts on carbon dioxide emission reductions, there is not enough analysis of the impact of the total of all the local actions. The problem is represented by the following challenge. Suppose the world unites and agrees to provide $1Tpa for ten years to mitigate future adverse climate change. What is the best strategy for spending that money for the reason given, namely to mitigate future climate change, and what will we be able to measure as the outcome of such an investment?

The answer is that no-one knows the latter now, or will ever know on the 2050 timescale. A crude calculation suggests that such a sum would allow the capture of all the CO 2 from coal fired power stations over the next year, reducing global CO 2 emissions by about 40%. But what difference would that actually make to the future climate, and would we be able to measure that difference as being attributable to the $1Tpa spent, and so even begin to assess the potential value-for-money of the investment?

What if the sun goes cool, or we have a spate of major volcanic eruptions: would we be able to isolate the contribution from the reduced CO 2 emissions? No. It is sober to compare the sheer scale of this undertaking in view of the total uncertainty in the outcome. It is a current act of faith that investments in green energy projects are intrinsically good, but this belief will be challenged from several directions in section “Generic lessons learned from introducing new technologies applied to decarbonization” of this paper. When one could distribute the same money and give the poorest 1B on earth $10Kpa each (assuming good governance, which is a large assumption), the likely measureable impact is very much clearer to anticipate and attribute and measure subsequently. The only attempt so far to consider a spent getting to $1Tpa by 2030 on clean energy 25 focuses entirely on the financial instruments, and has nothing to say on candidate engineering projects and so no attempt to rank them in terms of efficacy, value for money, or any other outcomes criterion.

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Science Diplomacy Advantage Frontline 1. Scientific cooperation support Chinese aggression in the South China Seas, making the situation worse.du Rocher, 2016 Sophie Boisseau du Rocher is a Senior Researcher and Associate at Centre asie IFRI in Paris, France. “Scientific Cooperation in the South China Sea: A New Vector for China’s Security Diplomacy in Southeast Asia?” Institut français des relations internationales, February 2016. https://www.ifri.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/av82_boisseau_du_rocher_scientific_cooperation_in_the_scs.pdf.

After two decades of “scientific cooperation”, what is the situation? If we reconsider the objectives articulated at the beginning of this study –to establish a link between conflicting parties –has scientific cooperation fulfilled its role? Has it served to establish an interim period to advance the negotiations for a Code of Conduct? Is cooperation better established now amongst the research teams? Or was it used initially to save –or buy -time?

Several conclusions can be drawn:

First, the scientific position: After more than 20 years of research programs in the South China Sea, the space is effectively starting to become well controlled. But this control is not really the product of scientific cooperation, it is rather the result of China leading research programs and beating the drum. Besides, scientific cooperation has not reduced mistrust, and common interest does not prevail.

Next, the diplomatic position: there is obviously diplomacy of scientific cooperation that enhances the symbolic value of collective research and knowledge. There is even a recognized diplomatic vocabulary. But the diplomatic position is no more satisfying when we observe the difficulty in agreeing on a Code of Conduct and ASEAN’s insistence on limiting China in its pursuits of Chinese projects93.

Finally, the strategic position: It is reasonable to question the link between the understanding of the maritime space that this research has enabled and the use of this understanding for gaining power. It is interesting to note that the Chinese started discretely with construction on Fiery Cross, from 1988, when China participated in the construction of a marine observation station for UNESCO. Then China constructed a helicopter pad, a quay, buildings and even a greenhouse. Today 200 soldiers are permanently stationed there94. Most probably, scientific cooperation programs will also give China’s submarine flotilla a decisive advantage.

Scientific cooperation has not reduced mistrust, and common interests do not prevail. In relations between Southeast Asia and China, the fulcrum is asymmetry. The differences in scientific cooperation noted in this paper demonstrate that asymmetry and its serious long-term consequences for neighboring countries.

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Science Diplomacy Advantage Frontline 2. Science diplomacy is a made up concept that doesn’t mean anything in other countries.Badger, 2009 Emily, writer, Miller-McCune magazine, 9/9 "Science diplomacy: Trading Frock Coats for Lab Coats" http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/science-diplomacy-trading-frock-coats-for-lab-coats-983

The activity's spin-off benefits for diplomatic relations, he says, are for others to judge. For that reason, he never uses the phrase "science diplomacy," preferring instead people-to-people or scientist-to-scientist exchanges. Berdahl's delegation similarly stressed on its trip that it did not wish to meet with politicians. It was there to talk about science and education, with scientists and educators. In a country historically suspicious of American motives, it may be best not to confuse the issue — especially when many of the different forms of "science diplomacy" the AAAS is advocating don't involve scientists empowered to speak for their government. "I think the understanding of this term 'science diplomacy' is kind of fuzzy here in the U.S., but it is really fuzzy overseas," Schweitzer later said. "'Diplomacy' has this foreign-relations emphasis, and when you say 'science diplomacy' to someone from a different country, I think that person automatically thinks about the ministry of foreign affairs and not about the ministry of science. I know that's true in Iran." The phrase may be necessary, he concedes, for the State Department to justify funding science overseas. And it does capture in Washington one of the many potential benefits to such programs. But the pitch is different to citizens on both sides of any exchange: The idea is not that we'll influence each other's behavior, but that we'll learn something in the process.

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Science Diplomacy Advantage Frontline 3. Science diplomacy fails—no evidence that it produces more cooperationDickson 2009 David “Science diplomacy: the case for caution” Director SciDev.net http://scidevnet.wordpress.com/category/new-frontiers-in-science-diplomacy-2009/

One of the frustrations of meetings at which scientists gather to discuss policy-related issues is the speed with which the requirements for evidence-based discussion they would expect in a professional context can go out of the window. Such has been the issue over the past two days in the meeting jointly organised in London by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Royal Society on the topic “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy“. There has been much lively discussion on the value of international collaboration in achieving scientific goals, on the need for researchers to work together on the scientific aspects of global challenges such as climate change and food security, and on the importance of science capacity building in developing countries in order to make this possible. But there remained little evidence at the end of the meeting on how useful it was to lump all these activities together under the umbrella term of “science diplomacy”. More significantly, although numerous claims were made during the conference about the broader social and political value of scientific collaboration – for example, in establishing a framework for collaboration in other areas, and in particular reducing tensions between rival countries – little was produced to demonstrate whether this hypothesis is true. If it is not, then some of the arguments made on behalf of “science diplomacy”, and in particular its value as a mechanism for exercising “soft power” in foreign policy, do not stand up to close scrutiny. Indeed, a case can be made that where scientific projects have successfully involved substantial international collaboration, such success is often heavily dependent on a prior political commitment to cooperation, rather than a mechanism for securing cooperation where the political will is lacking.

4. There’s no risk of war in the South China Seas. Ghosh, 2016, Nirmal Ghosh, "Low risk of accidental China-US clash in South China sea: US navy official", Straits Times, 5-6-2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/low-risk-of-accidental-china-us-clash-in-south-china-sea-us-navy-official

HONOLULU - The risk of an accidental armed clash between China and the United States in the South China Sea is "still pretty low", says Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Director of Operations of the US Pacific Command. The greater risk was a clash between civilian vessels of different countries, he said at the Pacific Command's headquarters in Hawaii, from where the 51-year-old commands five of the US Navy's 10 aircraft carriers, about 2,500 military aircraft and up to 400,000 military personnel. "I think these are professional navies," the Admiral said in remarks that come after after a series of high-profile stand-offs in South-east Asia over fishing rights. “The highest risk is associated with non-military vessels who have poor… communications systems on board. Anywhere in the world my worst maritime experiences have been with fishing boats. And this is nothing to do with any one country." His comments to The Straits Times were made at a briefing to journalists visiting under the East West Centre's Jefferson Fellowship programme.

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Extensions: Science Diplomacy Fails – China (___)

(__) Science diplomacy only gives power to China in the context of the South China Seas.du Rocher, 2016Sophie Boisseau. Senior Researcher and Associate at Centre asie IFRI in Paris, France. “Scientific Cooperation in the South China Sea: A New Vector for China’s Security Diplomacy in Southeast Asia?” Institut français des relations internationales, February. https://www.ifri.org/ sites/default/files/atoms/files/ av82_boisseau_du_rocher_scientific_cooperation_in_the_scs.pdf.

The strategy of “unrestricted warfare” consists of “winning the war by making war outside the war and being victorious on a battlefield other than the traditional battlefield”86.The aim is to win, not by getting into an “unlimited” conflict but by transferring the situation onto a new battlefield beyond the limits of those normally applied, in a broader context and with more extensive means. In the current situation, scientific cooperation enables China to develop an approach that does not need to resort to antagonizing the US to justify itself. It increases prestige and Chinese ascendency as a major regional power without generating direct friction, or even by being part of a wider regional diplomatic effort, largely through the Friendship & Cooperation Treaty proposed in 2014 and closer engagement between China and ASEAN. Scientific cooperation endorses the reality of the relationship, which is that of “unequal interdependence”. It is also, given the necessary means, an area where China maintains the initiative but as with “cooperation”, it is better received and Beijing therefore claims “to dispel fears”. Beijing associates its partners in supporting Chinese hard power.

Indeed, in this perspective hard and soft power merge in the name of efficiency. China uses its rapidly developing scientific and military potential to dissuade rivals, give credibility to its arguments and secure its regional space and its energy supply routes. One of the arguments used to justify the launch of the aircraft carrier Liaoning was scientific research. After the disappearance of the flight MH 370, proposals were put together for establishing a maritime search and rescue centre in the Spratly. China has made use of commercial agreements, outward direct investment, cultural exchanges and peacekeeping to improve its image. In this context, the intelligence services are particularly present and experts do not under-estimate the use made of the vectors of scientific cooperation such as the retrieval of discoveries and databases. Chinese naval exercises in the South China Sea are more and more frequent and getting longer; in 2013 for example, a 37-day exercise was organized around the aircraft carrier Liaoning, which included aircraft, surface ships and submarines. According to the Captain of the aircraft carrier, ZhangZheng, “the exercise served to evaluate the training and combat capability of the aircraft carrier during a period of scientific research”90. The timing between the maintenance of “open” and inclusive dialogue on scientific cooperation, the pursuit by the Chinese themselves of large research programs, the maintenance of a steady rhythm of military modernization, the establishment of a far more efficient Coast Guard flotilla and the construction of a new generation of surveillance vessels equipped with planes in a

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context of reorganization and major transformation for the Coast Guard is not just coincidence.

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Extensions: Science Diplomacy Fails – China

(__) Chinese scientists support the government’s island building efforts.Borton, 2016. James Borton is a faculty associate at the Walker Institute at the University of South Carolina and a non-resident fellow at the Saigon Center for International Studies at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. Managing the South China Sea Commons through Science Policy. South China Sea Think Tank , 2016. http://www.scstt.org/Publications/Perspectives-2016-10-Commentary-Borton.pdf.

Another impediment to the establishment of a science-based regional marine resource management initiative is that such an initiative would appropriately include scientists from China, many of whom are aligned with their government’s island-building efforts in the South China Sea and in stark disagreement with scientists like McManus about the alleged damage being done. Dr. Wu Shicun, for example, who is president and senior research fellow at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, claims that, in order to protect the region’s ecology, Beijing has adopted green engineering measures for use before, during, and after the reclamation work in the South China Sea.

When asked about the impact that dredging has on the SCS coral reefs, Wu stated in an email interview that, “China carries out its construction projects on the inner reef flat where corals have basically died. China gathers loose soil for its land reclamation on the flat lagoon basin, which is not fit for coral growth. “China has adopted ‘natural simulation,’ applied a new type of ‘cutter-suction dredging and land reclamation method,’ and has paid attention to the spread of sediment floating in its construction,” said Wu.

This assertion, however, is inconsistent with what has been witnessed to be taking place, with Chinese fishermen having been seen using large, extended propellers affixed to utility boats to chop up the reefs in preparation for the construction of artificial islands.

Marine science policy demands conservation and sustainable practices to protect coral reef formations. According to Jon Barnett, “the causes and consequences of ‘resource conflicts’ are traditional concerns of international relations and these powerfully inform the environment conflict thesis,” he wrote in his book, The Meaning of Environmental Security.

This is not to say that China does not have many excellent coral reef scientists of its own, who surely recognize that it is in the best interests of Beijing to protect coral reefs, maintain sustainable fisheries, and to eventually avail themselves of eco-friendly tourism once tensions decline. However, for such environmental advocacy to have any impact on policymaking, scientists must be free from intimidation by the State and able to present fact-based findings, even if these findings conflict with the official government position. Scientists in China are simply not at that stage yet.

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Extensions – Science Diplomacy Fails

Science diplomacy doesn’t solve war.Hinz 10 Franziska Hinz, Royal Society, London January 2010 http://diplomacy.aaas.org/files/New_Frontiers.pdf

It would be naive, however, to exaggerate the contribution that science can play in overcoming the deep and long-term foreign policy challenges in this region. Tensions fuelled by the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict, the politics of oil, and fundamentalist movements like the Taliban and al-Qaeda, mean that relations between Islamic countries, and with the wider world, remain fraught with complexities. In isolation, there is little that science diplomacy can do to build peace and stability in the Middle East. But as one small piece in the jigsaw of geopolitical relations, science can make a contribution. President Obama’s announcement in Cairo of scientific envoys to promote collaboration with Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia is a symbolic step, and more must be done if science diplomacy is to realise its potential.

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China Climate Change Negative NAUDL CORE FILES 2016-17Solvency

Solvency Frontline

1. Alternate causality – only US domestic action to address climate change solves the case. China is waiting on the US to act.Busby & Shidore, 2015Joshua Busby, Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the LBJ School of the University of Texas at Austin and Sarang Shidore independent researcher and consultant based in Austin and currently Visiting Scholar at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. . How The United States Can Reinforce Chinese Action on Climate Change. Paulson Institute, 2015. Available: http://www.paulsoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PPEE_Climate-Cooperation_English.pdf.

The most important way to encourage China’s sustained implementation of its own climate commitments is through US leadership at home and to follow through on its international commitments of finance to developing countries. Most important, the United States needs to make good on its pledge to reduce its emissions by 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, a pledge reaffirmed in Washington’s March 2015 submission to the UN climate secretariat in its INDC.23 If the United States suffers significant setbacks in implementation, whether legal or political, China’s leadership will likely have less incentive and political cover to stay the course on their own costly measures that will yield GHG reduction benefits.

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Solvency Frontline

2. Grid unreliability and wasted energy in existing Chinese renewables limit further emissions reductions.Follett, 16Andrew, 3-29-2016, Andrew Follett, "China Stops Building Wind Turbines Because Most Of The Energy Is Wasted", Daily Caller, 3-29-2016, http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/29/china-stops-building-wind-turbines-because-most-of-the-energy-is-wasted/

Beijing has ordered wind operators to stop expanding four times in the last five years because unreliable wind power was damaging the country’s power grid and costing the government enormous amounts of money. The best areas for wind turbines in China are far away from the coastal provinces where most of its population lives, and building the infrastructure to transmit wind energy over long distances is enormously expensive and could cost many times the price of generating the electricity. “We’ve known for a long time that levelized cost comparisons understate the cost of wind and solar because such estimates don’t take into account the cost of building new transmission from remote wind-rich generation sites to population centers,” Marlo Lewis, an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “But now we find another cost should be included when new transmission lines aren’t built: the wasted power that can’t be delivered.” China has spent enormous amounts of money on the country’s wind industry. China spent more than $80 billion building new green energy in 2014 alone, while the US spent a “mere” $34 billion. Despite the freeze on new wind-farms, the Chinese government still plans to get 15 percent of the country’s electricity from green energy by 2020. “Gigantic misallocations of capital have been endemic in all aspects of China’s economic buildup. Look at the brand new cities that are empty,” Ebell continued. “Now that China’s boom has cooled down and they don’t have as many trillions of dollars of spare cash, they are not going to be able to invest in everything, but will have to make choices based on profit and loss. Wind and solar power are obviously two of the sectors where investment will be scaled down dramatically.”

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Solvency Frontline

3. The Chinese government can’t enforce reductions. They don’t have a regulatory regime capable of doing it.Adams, 2015Patricia Adams is an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based NGO that has been involved in the Chinese environmental movement “ The Truth About China: Why Beijing will resist demands for abatement.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2, 2015. Available: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/12/Truth-about-China.pdf.

China’s central government is good at announcing targets to reduce emissions – and even installing controls sometimes – but incapable of enforcing them.85 For years China’s leaders have promised to clean up the air and for years inspectors have been bribed to ignore infractions. Local officials who are charged with carrying out central government environmental diktats often cannot comply, being ill-equipped to meet the ever-growing list of environmental challenges central officials set for them.86 Sometimes they simply don’t want to. Instead, they welcome polluters, often job-creating state-owned enterprises who will set up shop in their communities, bringing bribes, taxes, and revenue from fines with them.87 Air quality understandably worsens.

Lawsuits are also pointless because the judicial system delivers Communist Party-determined verdicts. Unable or unwilling to enact and enforce laws, the government relies on public relations. With pollution now the number one cause of popular dissent, the Chinese government has introduced a four-tiered air-quality measure to quell public outrage. At the blue level, all is well; at yellow the situation is acceptable; at orange and then the red level, factories and power plants must be shut and cars yanked off the road. Yet, when Beijing’s smog levels went ‘off the charts’ in January of 2014, the code remained at yellow.

‘Why doesn’t the government declare an emergency?’ everyone, including the state media, asked.88 The government is reluctant to raise the alert level, says Ma Jun, head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, because measures that would shut down the economy simply ‘are not feasible’.89 And if enterprises and drivers were to ignore high alert levels, as many are likely to do, the government’s edicts would be exposed for what they are: hot air. China’s air isn’t polluted simply because the technologies to keep it clean are unavailable but, more fundamentally, because the country lacks a credible regulatory regime that makes polluters pay and which rewards innovation.

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Solvency Frontline

4. Even if the Chinese central government tries to reduce emissions, they can’t. There’s no enforcement of environmental laws.Cao, 2015, Yaxue Cao, founder and editor of ChinaChange.org "Under the China Dome – A Reality Check", China Change, 3-9-2015, https://chinachange.org/2015/03/09/under-the-china-dome-a-reality-check/

Unlike Article 53 of the Law of the Peoples Republic of China on the Prevention and Control of Atmospheric Pollution, most of the Chinese environmental laws do specify enforcement authorities. The truck stopped by enforcement officers has a certificate, issued by environmental authorities in Hebei province, for meeting the national emission phase III standard, but in reality it has no emission measure. On camera, the officer squirms, telling Chai Jing that he can’t fine this truck because it is delivering the city’s essential supplies – eggs, milk and cooking oil. Here you witness a case in which an administrative order overrides the law. It is common in China.

In my favorite section of the film, Li Kunsheng, Beijing’s environmental official in charge of emission regulations, said that Chinese automakers, against the law, falsify data and that 90% of the vehicles don’t have basic emission controls. Individual automaker’s argue that they can’t afford to manufacture vehicles with proper emission controls if all of their competitors are omitting them. In addition, they argue, without gasoline supplies that meet a national standard, what’s the use of making cars that use cleaner gas? The Chinese petroleum industry does not produce high-grade gas because the industry itself is in charge of setting the standard, and being a monopoly, it is not inclined to upgrade gasoline.

Such a mess. There are laws, but they cannot be enforced. There is the know-how, but it is not carried out. How so? Let me try an analogy: A judge sits in the court, the plaintiff is his daughter, the defendant is his son, the prosecutor is his brother, the plaintiff’s attorney is his sister, the defendant’s attorney is his wife, and the court martial is his cousin. But this doesn’t prevent the judge from gaveling the court, “The dignity of the law lies in its enforcement!” (Xi Jinping)

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China Climate Change Negative NAUDL CORE FILES 2016-17Solvency Extensions

Extension Alternate Cause – US Action

(__) If the US fails to stay the course on climate change, China will slow its efforts.Busby & Shidore, 2015Joshua Busby, Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the LBJ School of the University of Texas at Austin and Sarang Shidore independent researcher and consultant based in Austin and currently Visiting Scholar at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. . How The United States Can Reinforce Chinese Action on Climate Change. Paulson Institute, 2015. Available: http://www.paulsoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PPEE_Climate-Cooperation_English.pdf.

China itself has no expectation of receiving funding from the GCF, but failure by the United States to fulfill this commitment would be viewed in Beijing as weakening US credibility. It may well be exploited by the Chinese to defend a slower pace of implementation, with an argument along the lines of, “we would have done more if you had lived up to your commitments.” Pledges to the GCF in 2014 exceeded $10 billion, yet actual contributions to the fund as of March 2015 amounted to just $100 million, or a mere 1 percent of the pledged amount. Since its creation in 2010, the process of establishing operating procedures, locating its secretariat in the Republic of Korea, and raising funds has been long and arduous. In March 2015, the GCF was accrediting different partners—civil society, private, and government—to help aggregate and shepherd applications for allocating funds. How the GCF will leverage additional resources and disperse these funds hinges on turning pledges into actual contributions.26

Even more important than funding commitments will be whether the Obama administration is able to stay the course on its ambitious emissions reductions commitments, including using existing federal regulatory authority to regulate new and existing power plants and roll out additional measures, such as rules for methane leakage, which were released before the president’s 2015 State of the Union address.27 Obama plans to use existing legislative and executive authority to meet these goals, such as already announced vehicle fuel emissions standards, efforts to phase down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) at home and abroad, efficiency standards on appliances, and new goals for reducing emissions by the federal government and expanded use of renewables.28 But whether those measures can survive political opposition remains to be seen. Indeed, the 2016 presidential election could shape up to be a critical moment in the trajectory of US climate policy. Some measures the Obama administration has enacted such as fuel efficiency standards on automobiles will likely endure whatever the outcome in 2016. But others, such as the rules on power plants, may be more dependent on the particular occupant of the White House. Recent court decisions in mid-2015 suggest the rules may survive judicial review, though legal challenges may ultimately reach the Supreme Court.29 While Congressional Republicans remain firmly opposed to action on climate change, there appears to be more alignment among the American public30 and the business community31 in supporting greater action. Nevertheless, staying the course on climate change could well see a large dose of uncertainty depending on the 2016 election outcome.

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Extension – No Chinese Enforcement (__) China will not enforce the plan. They will focus on non-carbon air pollution instead.Adams, 2015Patricia Adams is an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based NGO that has been involved in the Chinese environmental movement “ The Truth About China: Why Beijing will resist demands for abatement.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2, 2015. Available: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/12/Truth-about-China.pdf.

China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, is under intense international pressure to reduce its use of fossil fuels. Although China’s leaders aim to reduce the country’s fossil-fuel consumption to 80% of its energy mix by 2030, they will not forsake national economic growth for the supposed global good. This is because China’s Communist Party knows that to stay in power – its highest priority – it must maintain the economic growth rates that have raised the incomes of much of its population and kept opposition at bay. China’s leaders know that GDP growth is tied to fossil fuel use.

China’s government is also under intense domestic pressure to clean up its air pollution, which has made air unbreathable in many cities and has become a major flashpoint for political unrest. China’s air pollution is estimated to kill at least half a million people each year.

In an attempt to induce China to join global efforts to curtail carbon at the upcoming UN conference in Paris in December, President Obama and others argue that China’s abysmal air quality will improve if it cuts its carbon dioxide emissions. The opposite is true. Not only do the goals of reducing carbon emissions and air pollution not reinforce each other, they conflict. Carbon dioxide is a colourless, odourless, tasteless gas that does not harm health. Efforts to reduce it rely on unproven abatement technologies, and are prohibitively expensive. In contrast, abating air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide rely on proven technologies and are relatively inexpensive.

The West’s climate change establishment is worried that if Beijing focuses ‘narrowly’ on eliminating the air pollutants that worry the general population, China will entrench cleaner-burning fossil fuels in its economy, costing the West its leverage over China’s energy policies. Yet the Chinese public is unlikely to tolerate a ‘carbon first’ abatement strategy while it continues to breathe noxious air.

The apparent contradiction between what the West wants and what China’s leadership needs is easily resolved. China’s leadership knows that what China says to the West is more important than what China does, absolving it of the need to make any binding commitment to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. China also knows that Western leaders’ have no firm expectation of concrete commitments in Paris. Rather, their paramount goal is to maintain face at the Paris talks, which would collapse without China’s presence.

China is deftly preparing the stage in Paris to position itself as the Third World’s defender and also as a recipient of the billions in climate aid that it is demanding from the West. We can expect more announcements, agreements, and soaring rhetoric from global politicians at the Paris

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Conference, along with an agreement to meet again next year. What we cannot expect are reforms designed to reduce China’s carbon emissions.

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Extension – No Chinese Enforcement (__)

(__) It’s all a show – China won’t be able to enforce emissions reductions.Adams, 2015Patricia Adams is an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based NGO that has been involved in the Chinese environmental movement “ The Truth About China: Why Beijing will resist demands for abatement.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2, 2015. Available: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/12/Truth-about-China.pdf.

The apparent contradiction between what the West wants and what China’s leadership needs is easily resolved. China’s leadership knows that what China says to the West is more important than what China does, absolving it of the need to make any binding commitment to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. China also knows that Western leaders’ have no firm expectation of concrete commitments in Paris. Rather, their paramount goal is to maintain face at the Paris talks, which would collapse without China’s presence.

China is deftly preparing the stage in Paris to position itself as the Third World’s defender and also as a recipient of the billions in climate aid that it is demanding from the West. We can expect more announcements, agreements, and soaring rhetoric from global politicians at the Paris Conference, along with an agreement to meet again next year. What we cannot expect are reforms designed to reduce China’s carbon emissions.

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Extensions – No Implementation (__)

(__) Emissions reductions are impossible to implement in China.Adams, 2015Patricia Adams is an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based NGO that has been involved in the Chinese environmental movement “ The Truth About China: Why Beijing will resist demands for abatement.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2, 2015. Available: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/12/Truth-about-China.pdf.

Not only must a decarbonised future look expensive to the Chinese leadership but, given its history, it also looks impossible to implement.80 Despite having immense power over the economy and its citizens, the Chinese government knows that it lacks the legal and governmental structures to implement its major reform plans. In the language of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the country lacks the ‘soft technologies’ – among them cultural and institutional values such as property rights – needed to complement the more easily obtainable ‘hard technologies’.81 The country’s centralised rule creates perverse incentives that undermine economic efficiency82 and the corrupt, party-controlled judicial system makes environmental protection impossible. According to a 2014 study by Wai-Hang Yee et al. from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, when ‘adherence to the rule of law as a governance principle is an exception rather than the rule’ and the law is not highly regarded as a legitimate source of authority, ‘formal regulations fail to serve as a useful guide for the regulatees’, who may ‘not believe the regulators intend on enforcing the formal regulations’.83 The leadership is reduced to rhetoric and issuing blunt measures, such as token crackdowns on polluters. Even when a clean technology exists, it may not be used. As Xu Yuan at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs details, sulfur dioxide scrubbers are installed at a large proportion of Chinese coal power plants – a larger proportion than in the US – but they often run only during inspections by government officials; otherwise they tend to be turned off to save operating costs.84

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Extension – Chinese Renewables Fail (__)

(__) Slow renewables means China will fall behind inevitably Ford, 2015, Peter Ford Staff writer “Paris climate summit: Will China be seen as a leader or a villain?; China is dramatically increasing its share of renewable energy sources. But whether renewables will meet the 2030 targets is questionable.” The Christian Science Monitor, November 20, 2015 Friday, Lexis

China may not meet targets

Wu Changhua, Greater China director for The Climate Group, an influential international NGO promoting a low carbon future, sees the close match between Beijing's local and international goals as a good thing.

"China's commitment to the international process is very well aligned with its domestic agenda," she says. That is "encouraging" for prospects that Beijing will meet its commitments.

There are doubts however, among some experts, that China will be able to hit its ambitious targets for renewable energy use. Even though the country's investments in renewables lead the world - accounting for nearly 30 percent of the world's total renewable investment, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance - it will still be hard pressed to generate a fifth of its energy needs from wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear sources by 2030, says Li.

To do so, China will have to install the equivalent of all the electricity that the United States generates today, just in renewable sources. That will require wind and solar installations at double the current pace, according to Greenpeace calculations.

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Extension – Chinese Renewables Fail (__)

(__) Deep emissions reductions in China are not possible.Adams, 2015Patricia Adams is an economist and the executive director of Probe International, a Toronto-based NGO that has been involved in the Chinese environmental movement “ The Truth About China: Why Beijing will resist demands for abatement.” The Global Warming Policy Foundation, December 2, 2015. Available: http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/12/Truth-about-China.pdf.

Can China meet its low-carbon promises?

China has made grand promises about ‘rebalancing’ its economy to be energy-lite, en route to reaching its stated goals of capping carbon dioxide emissions and meeting 20% of its energy needs with non-fossil fuels by 2030. Many not only believe that these goals are achievable, they believe that in China, a dictatorship ruled by fiat, the goals are more easily achievable than in a messy democracy that must pander to different interest groups. This belief is mistaken. China’s Communist Party dictatorship and top-down economy would be a hindrance rather than a help in meeting these goals, even assuming China ever expected to meet them.

China’s stated goals are nothing but daunting. According to Scientific American: China will have to build as much wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower in the next 10 years as it has built coal-fired power plants in the last 10 years – as much as 1,000 gigawatts worth of alternatives to coal, also including natural gas, whether pipelined from Russia or fracked out of the country’s own shale deposits. And even if that dream is realized, an International Energy Agency analysis76 suggests such a build out, though possible, is not sufficient to slow rising coal consumption unless China’s economic or electricity use growth also slow significantly.77

According to the US-based Breakthrough Institute, a think tank focused on development and the environment, because its economy will continue to grow ‘a deep transformation of the present fossil energy economy is not on the horizon in China’.78 Breakthrough agrees with others that China’s target of meeting 20% of its energy needs from non-fossil sources merely represents a continuation of current trends and policies and ‘reflects the naturally slow pace of energy transitions’.79

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Answers To: Innovation Solves (__)

(__) Breakthrough innovations in energy are unlikely, even with substantial investment.

Mills, 2015Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, CEO of the Digital Power Group (a tech-centric capital advisory group), faculty fellow at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, "Will the Paris Climate Summit Lead to More Money for Scientists or Solyndras?", Manhattan Institute, 12-2-2015, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/will-paris-climate-summit-lead-more-money-scientists-or-solyndras-8215.html

The failures have one thing in common: not dealing realistically with physics and economics. The laws of nature cannot be ignored, nor can the realities of what society can pay. The skills, fortunes and reflexes in Silicon Valley were forged mainly in information technologies where the laws of physics permit very different outcomes than in energy domains. A myriad of venture speeches and pitches analogized cleantech as an emerging revolution akin to the digital disruption in computing and telephony. But whereas Moore’s Law catapulted computing into the future, so far the non-hydrocarbon alternatives attempt to drag society into the past with performance metrics that have characterized energy systems throughout most of human history: they use more land and materials, they are less convenient and less reliable, and all are more expensive. This is a devolution, not a revolution, akin to going from smartphones back to rotary-dial landlines. The physical and financial scale of global energy systems and the inertia associated with changing them completely dwarfs the world of Apps, Snapchat, video games and social media. New energy technologies have to compete with a well-functioning global multi-trillion-dollar hydrocarbon infrastructure. Growing into such scale not only takes time, but can happen only by competing honestly on cost. Society will not long tolerate using taxes or subsidies to make existing energy more expensive in order to make alternatives appear cheap. (See my previous column here for a deeper dive into the realities of scale.)

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Answers To: Innovation Solves (__)

(__) New energy technology can’t be quickly or cheaply developed or implemented.

Kelly, 2016M. J Kelly Professor Electrical Engineering Division , Department of Engineering , University of Cambridge. “Lesson from Technology Development for Energy and Sustainability.” MRS Energy & Sustainability : A Review Journal 3 (2016). Available: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/252666.

Technology breakthroughs are not pre programmable When public commentators such as Thomas L Friedman enter the debate about energy technologies, they urge more research to produce a breakthrough energy technology, in his case, a ‘plentiful supply of clean green cheap electrons’. 43 It is salutary to realize that all but two of the energy technologies used today have counterparts in biblical times, the only newcomers being nuclear energy and solar photovoltaics. The delivery of coal, gas, wind, water, and solar energy may be quite different today from then but the underlying principles of operation have not changed. Since nuclear fusion was first demonstrated, there has been a 60-year effort to tame it for a source of electrical energy, but so far without success. One can ask the experts whether they might have made more progress with more money, but the challenges have remained profound. Even if there were a breakthrough tomorrow in the basic processes, it would still take of order 40 years (rather than 20 in my opinion) to complete the further engineering and technology work and deploy fusion reactions to be able to provide (say) 10% of the world's electricity. We must get to 2050 without it. We are used in the IT sector to foresight programmes, which are possible on the basis of Moore's law of exponentially growing transistor count on chips continuing to hold, allowing one to predict future products. 44 It is one thing to predict the progress of a known technology (as it is with first generation renewables), it quite another to predict the arrival of a qualitatively new technology. At present we power the world with fossil fuel, nuclear power, and some hydro and geothermal power, and of those only the first two have the total capacity potential to provide the scale of energy needed for 9B people on earth in 2050, especially when more than half of these are living in megacities (see section “Tackle megacities first” below).

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