Offshore Wind Negative

Case Answers.................................................................................................................................................3

Warming Answers.....................................................................................................................................41nc Warming Frontline..........................................................................................................................5

Ext 1 – Won’t Replace Energy............................................................................................................11Ext 2 – Can’t Replace Fossil Fuels......................................................................................................13

Ext 3 – Decreasing...............................................................................................................................16Ext 4 – No Extinction..........................................................................................................................18

Oceans Answers.......................................................................................................................................211nc Oceans Frontline...........................................................................................................................22

Ext 1 – Not Good for the Ocean..........................................................................................................24Ext 3 – Oceans Impact Answers..........................................................................................................25

Ocean Acidification Impact Answers..................................................................................................28Coral Reef Impact Answers.................................................................................................................30

Solvency Answers....................................................................................................................................311nc Solvency Frontline........................................................................................................................32

Ext 1 – No Technology Yet.................................................................................................................34Ext 3 – States Less Complicated..........................................................................................................37

Ext 3 – Permitting Now.......................................................................................................................38Hurricanes Answers.................................................................................................................................39

Natural Disaster Impact Answers........................................................................................................40Off Case.......................................................................................................................................................42

Energy Prices Disad.................................................................................................................................431nc Prices link......................................................................................................................................44

A2 Cheap in Europe.............................................................................................................................45Environment Disad..................................................................................................................................46

Wind Farm Construction Bad..............................................................................................................47Politics Disad...........................................................................................................................................48

1nc – Plan is Unpopular.......................................................................................................................492NC—Offshore Wind Links................................................................................................................50

Case Answers

Warming Answers

1nc Warming Frontline

1. Even aggressive development would be only 5% of energy demandMUSIAL & BUTTERFIELD 06 National Renewable Energy Laboratory [W. Musial and S. Butterfield, Energy from Offshore Wind, May 1–4, 2006, http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/39450.pdf]

The economic potential resulting from this union requires some speculation, but for the purpose of illustrating the potential, a moderately aggressive development scenario based on preliminary analysis performed internally by the U.S. Department of Energy2, indicates a concerted research and development effort to develop offshore wind energy would result in 50 GW of installed offshore wind energy capacity in the United States in the next 20 years. This represents approximately 5% of the nation’s current electric generating capacity. At current pricing, this represents approximately $100 billion of capital investment with at least half of this revenue going to offshore design and construction contracts. Further expansion of the offshore wind industry is expected to double this capacity to 100 GW over the subsequent 10-year period. This revenue will flow directly to companies that have experience with offshore construction and that will benefit from the growth of offshore wind.

2. intermittency means wind energy can’t solve warmingTupi 10—Brad Tupi is an attorney with Tucker Arensberg, P.C., in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His practice includes environmental and general litigation [2010, “Wind Energy is Not the Answer,” http://www.jvas.org/pdf_files/Wind_Energy_Not_Answer.pdf]

Currently, wind power is hailed by some as a key weapon in the battle against global warming and as an important contributor to American energy independence. This paper will argue that wind energy is neither. Wind power cannot generate enough reliable electricity to replace conventional energy sources, including those that generate g reen h ouse g ases. Assuming for the sake of argument that carbon dioxide is contributing to global climate change,

wind power will not materially reduce CO2 emissions.

1. Wind Energy Is Unreliable and Intermittent .

A coal-fired power plant will generate electricity 24/7/365. A nuclear generating station will run for two years without interruption. Even a hydroelectric plant will put out consistent, uninterrupted energy unless the flow of water stops. As a result, whenever we want to turn on a light, cool off a room or boot up a computer, electric power is at our fingertips.Wind power is not like that. Wind is an unreliable source of energy for the obvious reason that the wind does not always blow. Sometimes it does not blow at all. Sometimes it blows at a speed too low to turn the blades of a wind turbine. And sometimes it blows too fast. High wind velocities can damage wind turbines, so turbines are set to shut off at wind speeds over 56 miles per hour.7 The operational wind speed range of a wind turbine is between 7 mph (the “cut-in speed”) and 56 mph (the “shut-down limit”). Within this operational range, small variations in wind speed have large effects on electricity output. 8 This is because a doubling of wind speed yields eight times the energy.9 So even when the wind is blowing within the turbine’s operational range, the power output is unpredictable .

Wind velocity often changes dramatically from hour to hour or from night to morning. As a result, wind power output can swing wildly over the course of a single day.10 From month to month the swings can be striking, too. In Spain, on Aug. 27, 2009, wind supplied less than 1% of the country’s electric power. On the morning of Nov. 8, 2009, wind power peaked, briefly providing 53.7% of the country’s electricity.11Another problem of wind power has to do with matching power production with consumer demand. High winds after dark do not satisfy the electricity demands of a hot, sultry afternoon. Wind performs worst

during the summer months, when power demand peaks .12 According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, wind turbines only deliver 8.7% of capacity during peak summer hours.13Similarly, the windiest places do not match the places with highest energy demand. In the United States, the states with the best wind resources are in the Midwest and West.14 The states with the highest electricity demand are in the East.15 Because we cannot generate electricity in North Dakota, put it in a box, and ship it to Manhattan, it is difficult to match wind energy supply with demand.

We need energy to be available on demand. Because it is intermittent, wind energy cannot meet this basic requirement .

3. Slowing now due to natural forcings—no risk of runaway warmingKlimenko 11 [VV, Research Assistant at the Department of Theoretical Astrophysics of the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, “Why Is Global Warming Slowing Down?,” 5-20, Doklady Earth Sciences, 2011, Vol. 440, Part 2, pp. 1419–1422]

The first decade of the present century has ended with a remarkable climatic event: for the first time over the past 65 years, the five year average global temperature over 2006–2010 turned out to be lower than the value for the previous five year interval (2001–2005). In addition, the absolute maximum temperature, which was attained as long ago as in 1998, has not been surpassed for thirteen years. Both these facts seem ingly support the arguments of the opponents of global warming theory, at least those who regard the anthro pogenic origin of warming questionable or even farfetched. Indeed, the anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide, which is the major greenhouse atmospheric component, has risen by 60% from 5.2 giga tons to 8.5 gigatons of carbon, and its concentration has increased from 339 to 390 ppmv (parts per million by volume). How then do we explain the apparent slowdown in the rate of global warming?Evidently, the observed global rise in temperature (Fig. 1) is a response of the climatic system to the combined action of both anthropogenic and natural impacts. Some of the latter are precisely the factors responsible for the current climatic paradox. Further, we will attempt to identify these factors and, based on their analysis, forecast the global climatic trends for the next decades.Figure 2 presents the wavelet spectra yielded by continuously analyzing the time series of global tem perature over 1850–2011 [1]. Here, we analyze only one of three existing global temperature datasets which are continuously updated, namely the HadCRUT3 temperature series provided by the Uni versity of East Anglia (accessible at http://www.cru. uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/), because this is, as of now, the only dataset covering more than a 150-year interval, which is crucial for our study. We note that it only recently became possible to analyze such long time series and, thus, identification of multidecade rhythms became a solvable task. The temperature data were preliminarily rid of the longterm anthropogenic trend associated with the accumulation of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere; this trend was calculated from the energybalance climate model developed at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MPEI) [2]. The resulting temperature series, free of anthropogenic trends, will contain important infor mation on the influence of natural factors. Figure 2 shows that, throughout the entire interval of instrumental observations since the mid nineteenth century, the data contain rather stable 70 year and 20 year cyclic components. A less significant 9year cycle was present in most observations (during 1870– 1900 and 1940–2000), and a 6year cycle persisted over a considerable part of the entire time span. Closely consistent results were also obtained when analyzing the temperature series by the maximum entropy method (MEM) (Fig. 3). As the order of the auroregression (AR) method is known to significantly affect the result, in our case this parameter was chosen to be onethird the length of the studied data series: according to the long experience in application of MEM in climate research, this value is suitable for providing useful information. All the harmonic com ponents identified above are statistically significant with a confidence level of 90%.Supposedly, the source of the dominant 70year cycle is the North Atlantic, where this harmonic is reliably identified not only in the ocean [3–5] but also on the continental margins: in Greenland [6], England [7], Finland [8], at the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago, and on the Yamal Peninsula [9]. Moreover, this periodical component is not only recognized in the instrumental data but it is also revealed in the time series of paleotemperature and pressure which date back to over hundreds and even thousands of years ago. We believe that this rhythm is associated with the quasiperiodical changes in the atmospheric and oceanic circulation known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and with the related pulsations in the advection of warm waters to the basins of the Nor wegian and Barents seas. Indeed, the time series of the NAO index contain an approximately 60to 70year component [10] and show a strong positive correlation with the time series of temperature in the Northern hemisphere [11]. The positive phases of NAO indices are character ized by a more intense westerly air mass transport and a noticeable warming of the major part of the nontrop ical zone in the northern hemisphere, which is most prominent in the winter–spring season. Incidentally, the most rapid phase of the presentday warming (1975–2005) just featured such seasonal asymmetry, which is more evidence in favor of the hemispherical and global temperatures being related to NAO. Finally, it turns out that the 70year periodicity is present in

the globally averaged temperature and in the temperature averaged over the northern hemisphere, whereas in the spectrum for the southern hemisphere, this harmonic component is rather weak (Fig. 3). This is an important additional argument in favor of the North Atlantic origin of the 70year cycle.The existence of the quasibidecadal oscillations is often attributed to the influence of the Sun. However, the situation is not so simple: in our case, this cycle is almost not recognizable in the northern hemisphere, although clearly pronounced in the southern hemisphere (Fig. 3). This fact motivates one not to con strain the probable origin of this periodicity to the behavior of the Sun, but also to search for its possible correlations to the variability in the Southern Oscillation (SO) whose index has a peak at a period of 22 years [12, 13]. The latter hypothesis is supported by the fact that the temperature series over the equatorial and southern portions of the Pacific as well as those over the entire water area of the Indian Ocean contain a distinctly expressed quasibidecadal oscillation [3]. In turn, the SO, which largely controls the tempera ture regime of the southern hemisphere, is undoubt edly affected by the variations in the rate of the Earth’s rotation, which also have a significant periodical com ponent at 22 years [14].As of now, the nature of the 9year oscillations is least clear. We suppose it to be a result of superimposi tion of oscillations associated with the lunar–solar tides that have characteristic times of 8.85 (the perigee period of the Moon) and 9.86 years (the period of barycenter of the Sun–Jupiter system), which are cer tainly able to cause significant changes to the atmo spheric circulation and, therefore, temperature. The comparison of the instrumental data series since 1850 with the results of calculations using the energy balance model with superimposed main cyclic components is presented in Fig. 1. The calculated curve in the interval 1850–2011 accounts for more than 75% of the observed variability in the data and clearly demonstrates that the natural factors may considerably enhance or, quite the opposite, reduce the ongoing warming up to its complete disappearing or even shortterm cooling, as has occurred during the last 6–8 years. We suppose warming will resume shortly in the years to come (Fig. 1). However, up to the end of the century, its rate will likely be lower than the value attained in 1975–2005 when the extremely intense positive phases of NAO and SO concurrent with the highest solar irradiation over the last 600 years [15] resulted in a

rate of warming as high as in excess of 0.2°C per decade. In the next few decades, the natural forcings will restrain the process of global warming . This will be primarily associated with the decline in solar activity and the transition to the negative phase in NAO, which features a weaker westerly air mass transport. Recent measurements show that both these processes are gaining strength. Indeed, the NAO index has consistently decreased since early 1990 and is now at a 40year low (http://www.cgd. ucar.edu/cas/jhurrell/indices.html). At the same time, the minimal solar constant over the entire 33year history of satellite observations has been recorded in the current, solar cycle 24, which started in the fall of 2008 (http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/ composite/SolarConstant/).

4. No risk of extinction.Lomborg 08—Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School [Bjorn, “Warming warnings get overheated,” The Guardian, August 15, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/15/carbonemissions.climatechange]

These alarmist predictions are becoming quite bizarre, and could be dismissed as sociological oddities, if it weren't for the fact that they get such big play in the media. Oliver Tickell, for instance, writes that a global warming causing a 4C temperature increase by the end of the century would be a "catastrophe" and the beginning of the "extinction" of the human race. This is simply silly. His evidence? That 4C would mean that all the ice on the planet would melt, bringing the long-term sea level rise to 70-80m, flooding everything we hold dear, seeing billions of people die. Clearly, Tickell has maxed out the campaigners' scare potential (because there is no more ice to melt, this is the scariest he could ever conjure). But he is wrong. Let us just remember that the UN climate panel, the IPCC, expects a temperature rise by the end of the century between 1.8 and 6.0C. Within this range, the IPCC predicts that,

by the end of the century, sea levels will rise 18-59 centimetres – Tickell is simply exaggerating by a factor of up to 400. Tickell will undoubtedly claim that he was talking about what could happen many, many millennia from now. But this is disingenuous. First, the 4C temperature rise is predicted on a century scale – this is what we talk about and can plan for. Second, although sea-level rise will continue for many centuries to come, the models unanimously show that Greenland's ice shelf will be reduced, but Antarctic ice will increase even more (because of increased precipitation in Antarctica) for the next three centuries. What will happen beyond that clearly depends much more on emissions in future centuries. Given that CO2 stays in the atmosphere about a century, what happens with the temperature, say, six centuries from now mainly depends on emissions five centuries from now (where it seems unlikely non-carbon emitting technology such as solar panels will not have become economically competitive). Third, Tickell tells us how the 80m sea-level rise would wipe out all the world's coastal infrastructure and much of the world's farmland – "undoubtedly" causing billions to die. But to cause billions

to die, it would require the surge to occur within a single human lifespan. This sort of scare tactic is insidiously wrong and misleading, mimicking a firebrand preacher who claims the earth is coming to an end and we need to repent. While it is probably true that the sun will burn up the earth in 4-5bn years' time, it does give a slightly different perspective on the need for immediate repenting. Tickell's claim that 4C will be the beginning of our extinction is again many times beyond wrong and misleading, and, of course, made with no data to back it up. Let us just take a look at the realistic impact of such a 4C temperature rise. For the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the lead economists of the IPCC, Professor Gary Yohe, did a survey of all the problems and all the benefits accruing from a temperature rise over this century of about approximately 4C. And yes, there will, of course, also be benefits: as temperatures rise, more people will die from heat, but fewer from cold; agricultural yields will decline in the tropics, but increase in the temperate zones, etc. The model evaluates the impacts on agriculture, forestry, energy, water, unmanaged ecosystems, coastal zones, heat and cold deaths and disease. The bottom line is that benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs (the benefit is about 0.25% of global GDP). Global warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070, when the damages will begin to outweigh the benefits, reaching a total damage cost

equivalent to about 3.5% of GDP by 2300. This is simply not the end of humanity . If anything, global warming is a net benefit now; and even in three centuries, it will not be a challenge to our civilisation. Further, the IPCC expects the average person on earth to be 1,700% richer by the end of this century.

5. Not caused by Human activityPaterson 11 [Norman R., Professional Engineer and Consulting Geophysicist, PhD in Geophysics from University of Toronto, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, “Global Warming: A Critique of the Anthropogenic Model and its Consequences,” Geoscience Canada, Vol. 38, No 1, March, Ebsco]

The term ‘global warming’ is commonly used by the media to mean ‘anthropogenic’ global warming; that is, warming caused by human activity. In this article, the writer has chosen to prefix ‘global warming’, where appropriate, by the terms ‘anthropogenic or ‘humancaused’ in order to avoid confusion. We are led today by our media, governments, schools and some scientific authorities to believe that, through his CO2 emissions, man is entirely, or almost entirely, responsible for the modest, modulated rise in global temperature of about 0.7° C that has taken place over the past 100 years. We are told, and many sincere people believe, that if we continue on this path, the planet will experience escalating temperature and dangerous sealevel rise before the end of this century. Over the past 20 years or so, this has become so much a part of our belief system, that to challenge it is to be labelled a ‘denier’ and put in the same category as a member of the Flat Earth Society. Yet, even a cursory review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature will show that the popular anthropogenic global warming dogma is being questioned by hundreds of respected scientists. Furthermore, emerging evidence points directly to other natural phenomena as probably hav ing greater effects on global temperatures than can be attributed to human-caused CO2 emissions. The disproportionate scientific weighting attributed to the anthropogenic warming interpretation, and the general public perception of its validity, could be a serious problem for society, as the human-caused global warming belief is diverting our attention from other, more serious anthropogenic effects such as pollution and depletion of our water resources, contamination of our food and living space from chemicals, and diminishing conventional energy resources.PROBLEMS WITH THE ANTHROPOGENIC MODEL The fact that the world has undergone cycles of warming and cooling has been known for a very long time, but the question as to man’s influence on climate did not become a hot debate until after the mid-twentieth century, when Revelle and Seuss (1957) first drew attention to the possible effect of greenhouses gases (particularly CO2 ) on the earth’s temperature. Subsequent studies pointed to the increase in atmospheric CO2 from roughly 0.025% to 0.037%, or 50%, over the past 100 years. Much was made of the apparent but crude covariance of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature, and the conclusion was drawn that [hu]man’s escalating carbon emissions are responsible for the late 20 th century temperature rise. Anxiety was rapidly raised among environmentalists, and also attracted many scientists who found ready funding for studies aimed at better understanding the problem. However, scientists soon encountered three important difficulties: i) To this date, no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming as to how CO2 at less than 0.04% of atmospheric concentration can make a major contribution to the greenhouse effect, especially as the relationship between increasing CO2 and increasing temperature is a diminishing logarithmic one (Gerlich and Tscheuschner 2009); ii) Geological records show unequivocally that past temperature increases have always preceded, not followed, increases in CO2 ; i.e. the warming could potentially cause the CO2 increase, but not the reverse. Studies (e.g. Petit et al. 1999) have shown that over the past 400 000 years of cyclical variations,

temperature rose from glacial values about 800 years before CO2 concentration increased. A probable explanation is that solar warming, over a long period of time, causes the oceans to outgas CO2 , whereas cooling results in more CO2 entering solution, as discussed by Stott et al. (2007). Averaged over a still longer period of geological time, it has been shown (Shaviv and Veizer 2003) that there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature; for example, levels of CO2 were more than twice present day values at 180 Ma, at a time when temperature was several degrees cooler; iii) Other serious mistakes in analysis were made by some scientists over the years. Perhaps the worst of these (see Montford 2010 for a thorough discussion) was the publication of the ‘Hockey Stick Curve’ (Fig. 1), a 1000-year record of past temperature which purported to show that “The 20 th century is likely the warmest century in the Northern Hemisphere, and the 1990s was the warmest decade, with 1998 as the warmest year in the last 1000 years” (Mann et al. 1999). This conclusion was adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2001 report and also by Al Gore in the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Subsequently, Mann et al.’s work has been challenged by several scientists (though to be fair, it is also supported by some). For example, McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) amended Mann’s graph, using all available data and better quality control (Fig. 1), and showed that the 20 th century is not exceptionally warm when compared with that of the 15 th century. However, the IPCC has continued to report a steady increase in global temperature in the face of clear evidence that average temperature has remained roughly level globally , positive in the northern hemisphere and negative in the southern hemisphere, since about 2002 (Archibald 2006; Fig. 2).WHAT CAUSES WARMING? It is likely that the cyclical warming and cooling of the earth results from a number of different causes, none of which , taken alone, is dominant enough to be entirely responsible . The more important ones are solar changes (including both irradiance and magnetic field effects), atmosphere–ocean interaction (including both multidecadal climatic oscillations and unforced internal variability), and greenhouse gases. All of these factors have been discussed by IPCC, but the first two have been dismissed as negligible in comparison with the greenhouse-gas effect and man’s contribution to it through anthropogenic CO2 . It is claimed (e.g. Revelle and Suess 1957) that the particular infrared absorption bands of CO2 provide it with a special ability to absorb and reradiate the sun’s longer wavelength radiation, causing warming of the troposphere and an increase in high-altitude (cirrus) cloud, further amplifying the heating process. Detailed arguments against this conclusion can be found in Spencer et al. (2007) and Gerlich and Tscheuschner (2009). These scientists point out (among other arguments, which include the logarithmic decrease in absorptive power of CO2 at increasing concentrations), that clouds have poor ability to emit radiation and that the transfer of heat from the atmosphere to a warmer body (the earth) defies the Second Law of Ther-modynamics. They argue that the Plank and Stefan-Boltzman equations used in calculations of radiative heat transfer cannot be applied to gases in the atmosphere because of the highly complex multi-body nature of the problem. Veizer (2005) explains that, to play a significant role, CO2 requires an amplifier, in this case water vapour. He concludes that water vapour plays the dominant role in global warming and that solar effects are the driver, rather than CO2 . A comprehensive critique of the greenhouse gas theory is provided by Hutton (2009).It is firmly established that the sun is the primary heat source for the global climate system, and that the atmosphere and oceans modify and redirect the sun’s heat. According to Veizer (2005), cosmic rays from outer space cause clouds to form in the troposphere; these clouds shield the earth and provide a cooling effect. Solar radiation , on the other hand, produces a thermal energy flux which , combined with the solar magnetic field, acts as a shield against cosmic rays and thereby leads to global warming. Figures 3 and 4 illustrate both the cooling by cosmic rays (cosmic ray flux, or CRF) and warming by solar irradiation (total solar irradiance, or TSI) in the long term (500 Ma) and short term (50 years), respectively. CRF shows an excellent negative correlation with temperature, apart from a short period around 250 Ma (Fig. 3). In contrast, the reconstructed, oxygen isotope-based temperature curve illustrates a lack of correlation with CO2 except for a period around 350 Ma.Other studies have highlighted the overriding effect of solar radiation on global heating. Soon (2005) studied solar irradiance as a possible agent for medium-term variations in Arctic temperatures over the past 135 years, and found a close correlation in both decadal (5–10 years) and multi-decadal (40–80 years) changes (Fig. 5). As to the control on this variation, the indirect effect of solar irradiance on cloud cover undoubtedly results in modulations of the sun’s direct warming of the earth. Veizer (2005) estimated that the heat reflected by cloud cover is about 78 watts/m2 , compared to an insolation effect of 342 watts/m2 , a modulation of more than 25%. This contrasts with an IPCC estimate of 1.46 watts/m2 , or about 0.5% of TSI, for the radiative effect of anthropogenic CO2 accumulated in the modern industrial era (IPCC 2001). Veizer concludes: “A change of cloud cover of a few percent can therefore have a large impact on the planetary energy balance.” In addition to solar insolation effects, the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field (which deflects the charged particles that constitute cosmic rays) and associated sun-spot maxima are correlated with historic periods of global warming such as the Medieval Climate Optimum (Fig. 6), and typically occur mid-way between ice ages (Veizer 2005). Solar magnetic minima have accompanied global cooling, such as occurred during the Little Ice Age between 1350 and 1850 A.D. A proxy for sunspot activity prior to the start of telescope observations in 1610 can be reconstructed from the abundance of cosmogenic 10 Be in ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland (Miletsky et al. 2004).Global temperature oscillations have been evident in both geologic and recent times, with periods varying from a few years (mostly solar and lunar driven) up to 120 million years (galactic and orbital influences) (Plimer 2009). In addition, ocean– atmosphere interactions are implicated in the control of some shorter-period climatic oscillations. For example, McLean et al. (2009) have studied the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a tropical Pacific ocean–atmosphere phenomenon, and compared the index of intensity (the Southern Oscillation Index, or SOI) with global tropospheric temperature anomalies (GTTA) for the 1960–2009 period (Fig. 7). McLean et al. (2009) concluded that “Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year long record, and 68% for the 50-year record”. They found the same or stronger correlation between SOI and mean global temperature, in which SOI accounted for as much as 81% of the variance in

the tropics (Fig. 8). A delay of 5 to 7 months was deduced between the SOI maximum and the associated temperature anomaly. Volcanic influences on temperature are also evident (Figs. 7, 8), probably caused by the injection of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it is converted into sulphate aerosols that reflect incoming solar radiation (McLean et al. 2009). The GTTA nearly always falls in the year or two following major eruptions.Both solar irradiation and ocean–atmosphere oscillations have therefore been demonstrated to have effects on global temperature of at least the same order of magnitude as the CO2 greenhouse gas hypothesis, and these alternative mechanisms are supported by well-documented empirical data. Nevertheless, the CO2 hypothesis , the theoretical basis for which is being increasingly challenged, remains the popular explanation for global warming in the public domain .THE CONTROVERSY The main factors that have led to heated scientific controversy regarding the cause of the mild late 20 th century global warming can be summarized as follows: i) A surge of media coverage and consequent public interest and anxiety , magnified by productions such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.ii) Fear and concern on the part of environmentalists, who were already aware of many other harmful aspects of industrial, commercial and other human activities. Environmentalists, including NGOs such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, exploited the open disagreements that existed among scientists as to the scale of the warming and its impacts, disagreements that inevitably arose because climate science is complex and empirical data were in short supply until recently.

Ext 1 – Won’t Replace Energy

Offshore wind’s not cost competitive—their projections are wrongHowland 12 Caitlin holds an honors degree in economics from the University of Maine. Advisors for this thesis include Gary Hunt, PhD in Economics, Jeff Thaler, J.D. Yale, Andrew Goupee, PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Sharon Tisher, J.D. Harvard, Sharon Wagner, PhD in Engineering and Public Policy. “The Economics of Offshore Wind Energy,” May, http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=honors

Offshore wind will not be viable in the coming years without a carbon tax and a potential government subsidy. If no developers invest in a farm, learning curve effects will be stunted and not be able to take the course of action predicted. The effect of learning-by-doing over time is crucial to decreasing costs . If an aggressive pricing scheme on carbon is adopted, it is possible deepwater offshore wind energy could become competitive in less than two decades.

Offshore wind can’t compete with gas—nothing will get builtScheid 12/17—Brian Scheid, Inside Energy with Federal Lands [December 17, 2012, “Despite poor market fundamentals, feds pour money into offshore wind industry,” Lexis]

The Obama administration has picked a strange time to try and ramp up the offshore wind-power industry, as natural gas prices remain low, construction costs for offshore wind turbines are excessively high, and a major tax credit for the fledgling industry will expire at the end of this month unless Congress can find a way to extend it.But despite those unfavorable market fundamentals, the Energy Department said last week it intends to provide $170 million in federal funding for seven wind projects in state and federal waters offshore six states — if Congress approves the request.Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that with the government’s help, the seven projects — offshore Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Virginia — could be delivering electricity to the grid as soon as 2017."The United States has tremendous untapped clean energy resources, and it is important for us to develop technologies that will allow us to utilize those resources in ways that are economically viable," said Chu, adding that the hoped-for federal funding will "pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable and more diverse domestic energy portfolio that develops every source of American energy."In a separate but related move, the Interior Department said it will begin gauging the wind industry's interest in leasing federal waters offshore North Carolina (IE, 29 October, 6). Tommy Beaudreau, the director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said the move "represents a significant step forward in facilitating the responsible development of renewable, clean energy offshore the United States.»But the administration’s push for the offshore wind-energy industry comes at a time when market fundamentals — particularly low gas prices — may be so uncompetitive that a single wind facility may never be built . In October , for example, Interior gave NRG Bluewater Wind Delaware the exclusive right to build a wind farm on about 150 square miles of federal waters offshore Delaware. But it's unclear if that ambitious project will actually be built, due to low gas prices, high project costs and capacity constraints .

Offshore wind is too expensive to meterLinowes 13—Lisa Linowes is the Founder and Executive Director of Industrial Wind Action Group [February 26, 2013, “Maryland Offshore Wind: O’Malley’s Folly,” http://www.masterresource.org/2013/02/maryland-offshore-wind-omalley/]

But don’t be fooled by the political victory. Despite the Governor’s grand claim that his bill will deliver offshore wind at an affordable price, the numbers tell a different story. O’Malley’s folly will deliver a paltry 80 megawatts of offshore wind at most, while draining billions of dollars from the State’s economy.

Offshore Wind: Too Expensive to MeterTechnological, environmental and visual impacts have slowed offshore wind development in the United

States, but the primary, universal issue is cost . Offshore wind is not economically viable without significant public support, as O’Malley knows.The controversial Cape Wind project (468 MW), proposed ten years ago, is the most expensive energy project on the planet. Assuming a 2016 in-service date, the starting wholesale bundled price [1] will be $207.33 per megawatt hour (MWh), escalating by 3.5% yearly thereafter. By the end of the contract’s 15-year term, Cape Wind will demand over $330/MWh compared to conventional energy at $60/MWh or under. Massachusetts ratepayers will pay billions in above-market energy costs. [2]The power purchase agreement awarded Deepwater Wind’s pilot project (30 MW) off the coast of Block Island (Rhode Island) mirrors Cape Wind’s with a starting contract price of $244/MWh and the same yearly escalator. [3]Last year, New Jersey was urged to reject the Fishermen’s Energy offshore project (30 MW) over cost and in Delaware, NRG’s Bluewater Wind terminated its power purchase agreement with Delmarva Power citing lack of financing and growing public opposition to expensive renewable energy.Cost, aesthetics and environmental concerns also shelved proposals in Michigan and New York that would erect turbines in the Great Lakes.Maryland‘s PlanO’Malley’s bill extends Maryland’s 2007 Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) by requiring up to 2.5% of the State’s electricity load come from offshore wind.Unlike other proposals, private wind developers needn’t negotiate power purchase agreements with electricity suppliers to sell their energy. Instead, the bill establishes a ratepayer funded subsidy known as an OREC (‘Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Credit’) which pays a bundled price up to $190 per megawatt hour (MWh). Project owners, in turn, sell their energy and capacity to the power pool and refund the revenue back to ratepayers while retaining the environmental benefit.This looks like a bureaucratic nightmare for the State but a sweet deal for developers who can waltz into Maryland waters knowing they have a guaranteed market for their power and certainty of price. The $190/MWh ORECs are more than three times the price of conventional generation — including onshore wind! (Nonsolar Tier 1 RECs in Maryland are trading for only $4/MWh).Getting to Yes … Log Rolling and MoreTwo prior attempts at an offshore wind bill failed in large part due to added costs imposed on ratepayers, particularly those least able to subsidize a rich man’s vision. And no pixie dust magically appeared since the last legislative session that made the price of offshore wind easier to swallow.The Governor fostered support for his bill the old fashion way — through handouts and hand-waving.Earning the nod of those representing poorer districts meant packing the bill with millions in grants to boost small and minority-owned businesses that might involve themselves in the offshore sector.The hand-waving came in the form of price caps on electricity bills – $1.50 per month for average residential customers and 1.5% total annual electric bills for nonresidential customers. Pitching the cost on a ‘per-ratepayer’ basis hides the billions of dollars of extra cost that $190/MWh energy adds up to. [4]But the caps meant limiting the project size. The largest project that could be built offshore without exceeding the caps is 211 MW (about 1% of load). At a 39.3% capacity factor, this equates to roughly 80 MW of output. Even at this reduced size, ratepayers will still incur nearly $2 billion in above-market energy prices over 20 years.Questioning the BenefitsO’Malley boasts that wind energy carries a “fixed, stable, affordable rate that can be locked-in” over the next 20–-30 years, but locking in prices at rates significantly above EIA’s forecasts for average wholesale electricity prices makes no sense. Not to mention that the turbines will reach the end of their useful life before 20 years.

Ext 2 – Can’t Replace Fossil Fuels

Don’t get blown away by wind power projections—their studies are futuristic at best and don’t breath a word on feasibility of their scenariosElectricity Journal 12 [“Let's Not Get Totally Blown Away by Wind Power Projections,” The Electricity Journal, Volume 25, Issue 10, December 2012, Pages 1, 5–6, Science Direct]

If you believe the numbers, that is all it takes to supply the world with half of its energy needs by 2030: a mere 4 million 5 MW wind turbines atop 100-meter towers, spinning gracefully with no carbon emissions. Wouldn’t that be lovely?In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson, two researchers at Stanford University, start by asking how much energy can wind generate globally? The answer is – not surprisingly – more than you will ever want, need – or could afford – although the authors do not dwell on the costs or the feasibility of the scheme . The technical potential of global wind energy , like

that of solar, geothermal, or tidal energy, is huge: around 250 TW in the case of wind, which is more than current global power needs.The authors asked how many wind turbines it would take to meet half of global energy needs, which they estimate to be around 5.75 TW of installed capacity. A few more calculations – on the back of the envelope, one assumes – and they conclude that, “there is no fundamental barrier to obtaining half or several times the world's all-purpose power from wind in a 2030 clean-energy economy.”

But how realistic would such a scenario be? The study is mute on the details such as how much the scheme would cost, where the 4 million wind turbines would be installed, how the intermittency and variability of wind would be resolved, and so on.The authors point out that in 2011 nearly 200,000 wind turbines provided roughly 2.5 percent of global energy needs. The industry added 40.5 GW of new capacity in 2011, bringing the global total to 238 GW. Why not go ballistic with wind, is essentially what they are asking. Why not indeed?The reasons include significant challenges associated with reliance on a large percentage of intermittent renewables that would be faced by the grid operator. The main problem is that renewables are non-dispatchable, that is, they come – and go – with little regard to what demand on the grid may be. They can be predicted, but not accurately, as in episodes when the wind suddenly and unexpectedly dies, or when clouds cover solar arrays with little warning. These and other peculiarities of renewables will need to be studied in greater detail , including in a recent report by the Reason Foundation titled The Limits of Wind Power, released in October 2012. It provides a number of sobering reasons why that 4-million-turbine scenario would be hard to pull off.The short answer is, the more wind on a given network, the bigger the need for backup or reserve generation and/or storage. Despite major advances in predicting wind, it remains largely an inexact science, as illustrated in what happened during December 2004 in Germany, where prevailing winds suddenly plunged from 6,000 MW essentially to zero. That was then; these days, Germany has far more installed wind capacity, meaning a similar incident would have an even more pronounced effect.These types of dramatic gyrations in both wind and solar output occur with increased frequency everywhere. The grid operator must have the capability to absorb the variable output when available, and replace it with something else, more or less instantly. This increases operational costs of thermal units and/or requires expensive storage or more transmission investment.As wind capacity grows in a network to high levels (and high is a subjective term in this context), keeping the system stable and reliable becomes an increasing challenge, and increasingly expensive . High penetration of renewables can be accommodated, but it takes effort.The Reason Foundation study examines the tradeoff between higher levels of wind penetration – which requires more storage and backup – vs. less wind and higher reliance on traditional resources. The main conclusion of the study, replicated by numerous other studies, is that there are tradeoffs, and getting the right mix of intermittent and dispatchable generation requires serious analysis and sensitivity analysis.

Clearly, the vision of 4 million wind turbines providing 50 percent of the global energy needs by 2030 is “futuristic,” to put it politely. In the meantime, the growing sophistication of grid operators, who are already operating systems with high levels of renewable production, is encouraging.

Lack of accurate forecasting is a physical barrier to wind penetrationForbes et al. 12—Kevin F. Forbes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Economics at The Catholic University of America. Marco Stampini, Ph.D., is a staff economist at the Inter-American Development Bank. Ernest M. Zampelli, Ph.D., is a Professor of Economics at The Catholic University of America [“Are Policies to Encourage Wind Energy Predicated on a Misleading Statistic?” The Electricity Journal, Volume 25, Issue 3, April 2012, Pages 42–54, Science Direct]

V. ConclusionThis article casts substantial doubt on the appropriateness and wisdom of weighting wind energy forecasting errors by installed wind energy capacity. In short, capacity-weighted forecasting errors are misleading because it is the difference between the generation and consumption of electricity in terms of energy – not capacity – that determines whether the “lights stay on.” Our finding that wind-forecasting errors are far larger than load-forecasting errors is not isolated, but is observed across nine electricity control areas in four countries . Additionally, consistent with the findings of Forbes et al. (2011), this article provides evidence

that these forecast errors have consequences for system operations.We hope these findings will encourage caution and add perspective to the exuberance over policies to promote the large-scale use of wind and other forms of renewable energy to generate electrical power . We remain unconvinced of the cost-effectiveness in addressing climate change vis á vis a carbon tax or cap-and-trade approach. As a case in point, consider ERCOT, in which approximately 39 percent of electricity consumption was generated from coal-fired plants during the period Dec. 5, 2009–Nov. 30, 2010, compared to approximately 30 percent generated by combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT). Before pursuing policies aimed at stimulating large-scale wind penetration to reduce the carbon footprint, it would seem prudent to implement policies that would reallocate generation resources from coal to CCGT, given that natural gas possesses less than half the carbon content of coal.Such an approach may be entirely inadequate to those, e.g., Delucchi and Jacobson (2011), who argue that complete conversion to renewables is entirely feasible technologically, but remains stymied by political and social factors. We point out that the inability of wind energy forecasters to forecast wind energy accurately is neither a political nor a social factor. It is also not a myth .

Their studies are just wishful thinking—renewables could theoretically provide all our energy, but it’s unfeasibleElectricity Journal 12 [“Pushing the Envelope on Renewable Additions,” The Electricity Journal, Volume 25, Issue 10, December 2012, Pages 2–4, Science Direct]

Remember President Obama's one-time best seller, The Audacity of Hope? A new genre of studies on the upper limits of renewables might be called The Audacity of Renewable Growth Projections .

It all started with the publication of a report by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) known as 20 Percent Wind by 2030. The pioneering study concluded that, aside from a long list of formidable obstacles – technical, economic, financial, regulatory, and so on – there are no fundamental physical barriers to meeting a 2030 target of 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs from wind alone. Most of the report, however, was focused on how one might overcome the obstacles.At the time of its release, the report's results were questioned as unreasonable and/or infeasible by some critics. As it turns out, the U.S. has made more progress in installing wind capacity during the interim years than the DOE report had projected as needed to meet the target. This suggests that the 20 percent goal is not only reasonable but is in fact a fait accompli.To its credit, with the report DOE emboldened a number of more aggressive studies, pushing the envelope to ever-higher limits and shrinking timelines. Moreover, if wind alone could provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity

needs, what could wind and solar combined with other renewable energy resources achieve? And if the U.S. could reach such lofty goals, why not do it on a global scale?This past summer, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a four-volume study that examined a scenario where renewables could meet 80 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2050. The NREL study , like that of DOE,

was mostly focused on how such a scenario could possibly take shape, what must be done to achieve it, and how to resolve the multitude of obstacles. But once again, the overwhelming message was that such an incredible feat could, at least technically, be achieved, that it is not pure fantasy .Over time, researchers have gotten progressively bolder – more reckless and occasionally less realistic – as they keep pushing the envelope on what can be achieved with higher penetration of renewables over shrinking horizons. One recently published study suggests that half of the world's energy needs can be met with 4 million 5

MW wind turbines. That study makes it sound easy enough, but it isn’t .

The confidence is growing exponentially that more can be done in shorter time if we push the limits and persevere, despite higher initial costs and some well-known troubling aspects of renewables, namely their intermittency, low power density, low load factor, need for massive amounts of backup power and need for transmission investments to move the power from where it can be produced to where it can be consumed.

Ext 3 – Decreasing

Reject their impact—they cherry-pick the worst case scenarios and assume they are likely—every scientific study concludes that the likelihood of such devastation is virtually zeroEastin et al. 11 [Josh, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, Reiner Grundmann and Aseem Prakash, “The two limits debates: “Limits to Growth” and climate change,” Futures, February, Vol 43, Issue 1, pp. 16-26, ScienceDirect]

And Hjerpe and Linnér point out, ‘The IPCC ‘describes scenarios as ‘alternative images of how the future might unfold … to analyze how driving forces may influence future emission outcomes’ (…), i.e., they are not designed to provide blueprints for the future. The IPCC … emphasizes that neither probability nor desirability is attached to the various scenario families … The future evolution of society is recognized as an uncertain process of interaction between, for example, demographic development, socio-economic development, and technological change.’ [50]

There is no probability assigned to the various scenarios which opens the way for decision makers to pick the one that aligns with their preconceptions . In this sense, both LtG and IPCC have used scenarios in order to communicate the possibility of a dystopian future, not as a prediction, but as a reminder that something needs to be done urgently if we are to prevent the worst.

Doomsayers use faulty data and rely on consensus at the expense of sound scienceKampen 11 [Jarl, Assistant professor, Research Methodology group at Wageningen University and Research, “A methodological note on the making of causal statements in the debate on anthropogenic global warming,” June, Theoretical & Applied Climatology, 104:423-427, EBSCO]

Briefly stated, the major shortcoming of the verification criterion is that it allows only experience to decide upon the truth or falsity of scientific statements (Popper 1965: 42; see Rapp 1975). Popper's most important contribution to the debate was to state that every scientific theory should be able to list counter-examples which, if found in reality, disconfirm (“falsify”) the theory. This is the principle of falsification. In the case of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the theory should list one or more counterexamples that could (potentially) disconfirm the theory. This listing of potential falsifiers appears to be missing in the present debate on AGW. In fact, some skeptics in the debate on AGW point out that all natural climatic disasters are used as evidence (verification) for the human impact on climate, whereas evidence that a post WWII global warming is absent in, e.g., the Greenland Ice-Core Bore Record is ignored as falsifying evidence (see, e.g., Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998; Feldman and Marks 2009). Needless to say that a methodologically sound theory would encompass all available evidence and not “cherry-pick” those pieces of evidence that confirm the theory while ignoring those that do not.Unfortunately, when a theoretical phenomenon such as AGW becomes a global political program, it soon becomes vulnerable to methodological fallacies in the realm of social and political science. Leaving aside the quality of used data and methods, the IPCC report aimed at reaching a consensus. Consensus is recognized by some social scientific methodologists as the defining feature of social science (Swanborn 1996; Feyerabend 1987). However, if reaching consensus were really the hallmark of sound science, the scientific theories of Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, and many others would never have seen daylight. Also, there is no guarantee that majorities will reach sensible opinions (think only of the democratic Weimar republic in the 1930s). Finally, scientists need to make a living, and they will not bite the hand that feeds them, an argument used by some advocates of AGW who claim that climate skeptics are sponsored by “Big Carbon”. Therefore, consensus must be dismissed as a defining feature of science . The IPCC recognizes the limitation of consensus by adding the phrase ‘and much evidence’ when it makes statements as in, e.g., “there is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few

decades” (IPCC 2007: p. 7, italics added). We must therefore discuss the sources of evidence that are used to formulate the many causal statements on AGW issued in the report.The quality of all scientific research depends of course, on the quality of the data that are being processed. Regardless of the quality of the (statistical) model used for analysis, if bad data are fed to the model, then the result of the analysis will be bad. This principle is known as garbage in–garbage out. In other words, if the data that are fed into climate models are open to dispute, then so are the projections of these models. In the scientific (i.e., peerreviewed) literature, several authors have expressed doubts about the quality of the analyzed data and the possibility to derive at valid inferences on human impact on global warming (e.g., Jaworowski 1994; Soon et al. 2004; Michaels 2008; Pielke et al. 2007). However, since the author of this article is no expert on climate science, the issue of whether or not data used in climate science are of enough quality will be left for others to decide. Instead, in this methodological note on the making of causal statements in the debate on AGW, we focus on the study designs that are used to establish the causal hypotheses. The following sections discuss briefly the consequence of a lack of experiment and the relying on correlational data for establishing causal relationships. This discussion prepares the ground for the formulation of possible falsifiers of AWG. Some concluding remarks remain in the last section.

Ext 4 – No Extinction

Adaptation means no catastrophic impact to warmingKenny 12 [April 9, 2012, Charles, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, and author, most recently, of Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More., “Not Too Hot to Handle,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/09/not_too_hot_to_handle?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full]

But for all international diplomats appear desperate to affirm the self-worth of pessimists and doomsayers worldwide, it is important to put climate change in a broader context. It is a vital global issue -- one that threatens to slow the worldwide march toward improved quality of life. Climate change is already responsible for more extreme weather and an accelerating rate of species extinction -- and may ultimately kill off as many as 40 percent of all living species. But it is also a problem that we know how to tackle, and one to which we have some time to respond before it is likely to completely derail progress. And that's good news, because the fact that it's manageable is the best reason to try to tackle it rather than abandon all hope like a steerage class passenger in the bowels of the Titanic.Start with the economy. The Stern Review, led by the distinguished British economist Nicholas Stern, is the most comprehensive look to date at the economics of climate change. It suggests that, in terms of income, greenhouse gasses are a threat to global growth, but hardly an immediate or catastrophic one. Take the impact of climate change on the developing world. The most depressing forecast in terms of developing country growth in Stern's paper is the "A2 scenario" -- one of a series of economic and greenhouse gas emissions forecasts created for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It's a model that predicts slow global growth and income convergence (poor countries catching up to rich countries). But even under this model, Afghanistan's GDP per capita climbs sixfold over the next 90 years, India and China ninefold, and Ethiopia's income increases by a factor of 10. Knock off a third for the most pessimistic simulation of the economic impact of climate change suggested by the Stern report, and people in those countries are still markedly better off -- four times as rich for Afghanistan, a little more than six times as rich for Ethiopia.It's worth emphasizing that the Stern report suggests that the costs of dramatically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is closer to 1 (or maybe 2) percent of world GDP -- in the region of $600 billion to $1.2 trillion today. The economic case for responding to climate change by pricing carbon and investing in alternate energy sources is a slam dunk. But for all the likelihood that the world will be a poorer, denuded place than it would be if we responded rapidly to reduce greenhouse gases, the global economy is probably not going to collapse over the next century even if we are idiotic enough to delay our response to climate change by a few years. For all the flooding, the drought, and the skyrocketing bills for air conditioning, the economy would keep on expanding, according to the data that Stern uses.And what about the impact on global health? Suggestions that malaria has already spread as a result of climate change and that malaria deaths will expand dramatically as a result of warming in the future don't fit the evidence of declining deaths and reduced malarial spread over the last century. The authors of a recent study published in the journal Nature conclude that the forecasted future effects of rising temperatures on malaria "are at least one order of magnitude smaller than the changes observed since about 1900 and about two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures." In other words, climate change is and will likely remain a small factor in the toll of malaria deaths into the foreseeable future.What about other diseases? Christian Zimmermann at the University of Connecticut and Douglas Gollin at Williams evaluate the likely impact of a 3-degree rise in temperatures on tropical diseases like dengue fever, which causes half a million cases of hemorrhagic fever and 22,000 deaths each year. Most of the vectors for such diseases -- mosquitoes, biting flies, and so on -- do poorly in frost. So if the weather stays warmer, these diseases are likely to spread. At the same time, there are existing tools to prevent or treat most tropical diseases, and Zimmerman and Gollin suggest "rather modest improvements in protection efficacy could compensate for the consequences of climate change." We can deal with this one.It's the same with agriculture. Global warming will have many negative (and a few positive) impacts on food supply, but it is likely that other impacts -- both positive, including technological change, and negative, like the exhaustion of aquifers-- will have far bigger effects. The 2001 IPCC report suggested that climate change over the long term could reduce agricultural yields by as much as 30 percent. Compare that with the 90 percent increase in rice yields in Indonesia between 1970 and 2006, for example.Again, while climate change will make extreme weather events and natural disasters like flooding and hurricanes more common, the negative effect on global quality of life will be reduced if economies continue to grow. That's because, as Matthew Kahn from Tufts University has shown, the safest place to suffer a natural disaster is in a rich

country. The more money that people and governments have, the more they can both afford and enforce building codes, land use regulations, and public infrastructure like flood defenses that lower death tolls.Let's also not forget how human psychology works. Too many environmentalists suggest that dealing with climate change will take immediate and radical retooling of the global economy. It won't. It is affordable, practical, and wouldn't take a revolution. Giving out the message that the only path to sustainability will require medieval standards of living only puts everyone else off. And once you've convinced yourself the world is on an inevitable course to disaster if some corner of the U.S. Midwest is fracked once more or India builds another three coal-fueled power plants, the only logical thing to do when the fracking or the building occurs is to sit back, put your Toms shoes on the couch, and drink micro-brewed herbal tea until civilization collapses. Climate change isn't like that -- or at the very least, isn't like that yet.So, if you're really just looking for a reason to strap on the "end of the world is nigh" placards and go for a walk, you can find better excuses -- like, say, the threat of global thermonuclear war or a rogue asteroid. The fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions is one for the hard-nosed optimist.

Empirics prove our argumentINPCC 10—Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change [Past Warm Episodes did not Cause Extinction, 15 July 2010, http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/jul/15jul2010a7.html]

Many claims have been made about catastrophic negative effects of increasing air temperature on biodiversity; but nearly all of these claims are based on either speculation or simple correlative models. In the study of Willis et al. (2010), on the other hand, past historical periods were identified in which climate was either similar to that projected by global climate models for the next century or so, or in which the rate of temperature change was unusually rapid; and these real-world periods were examined to see if any real-world climate-related extinctions had occurred. The first period they examined was the Eocene Climatic Optimum (53-51 million years ago), during which time the atmosphere's CO2 concentration exceeded 1200 ppm and tropical temperatures were 5-10°C warmer than modern values. Yet far from causing extinctions of the tropical flora (where the data are best), the four researchers report that "all the evidence from low-latitude records indicates that, at least in the plant fossil record, this was one of the most biodiverse intervals of time in the Neotropics." They also note that "ancestors of many of our modern tropical and temperate plants evolved ...when global temperatures and CO2 were much higher than present...indicating that they have much wider ecological tolerances than are predicted based on present-day climates alone." The second period they examined consisted of two rapid-change climatic events in the Holocene -- one at 14,700 years ago and one at 11,600 years ago -- during which times temperatures increased in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere by up to 10°C over periods of less than 60 years. During these events, there is evidence from many sites for rapid plant responses to rapid warming. And the authors note that "at no site yet studied, anywhere in the world, is there evidence in the fossil record for large-scale climate-driven extinction during these intervals of rapid warming ." On the other hand, they report that extinctions did occur due to the cold temperatures of the glacial epoch, when subtropical species in southern Europe were driven out of their comfort zone. The study of Willis et al. also makes use of recent historical data, as in the case of the 3°C rise in temperature at Yosemite Park over the past 100 years. In comparing surveys of mammal fauna conducted near the beginning and end of this period, they detected some changes, but no local extinctions. Thus, they determined that for all of the periods they studied, with either very warm temperatures or very rapid warming, there were no detectable extinctions.

Adaptation solves the impactLomborg 10—Bjorn Lomborg, Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, former director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, 11-17-2010 [“Cost-effective ways to address climate change,” Washington Post, November 17, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111604973.html]

Since 1930, excessive groundwater withdrawal has caused Tokyo to subside by as much as 15 feet. Similar subsidence has occurred over the past century in numerous cities, including Tianjin, Shanghai, Osaka, Bangkok and Jakarta. And in each case, the city has managed to protect itself from such large relative sea-level rises without much difficulty. The process is called adaptation, and it's something we humans are very good at. That isn't

surprising, since we've been doing it for millennia. As climate economist Richard Tol notes, our ability to adapt to widely varying climates explains how people live happily at both the equator and the poles. In the debate over global warming, in which some have argued that civilization as we know it is at stake, this is an important point. Humankind is not completely at the mercy of nature. To the contrary, when it comes to dealing with the impact of climate change, we've compiled a pretty impressive track record. While this doesn't mean we can afford to ignore climate change, it provides a powerful reason not to panic about it either. There is no better example of how human ingenuity can literally keep our heads above water than the Netherlands. Although a fifth of their country lies below sea level - and fully half is less than three feet above it - the Dutch maintain an enormously productive economy and enjoy one of the world's highest standards of living. The secret is a centuries-old system of dikes, supplemented in recent decades by an elaborate network of floodgates and other barriers. All this adaptation is not only effective but also amazingly inexpensive. Keeping Holland protected from any future sea-level rises for the next century will cost only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Coping with rising sea levels is hardly the only place where low-cost, high-impact adaptation strategies can make a huge difference. One of the most pernicious impacts of global warming is the extent to which it exacerbates the phenomenon known as the urban "heat island effect" - the fact that because they lack greenery and are chockablock with heat-absorbing black surfaces such as tar roofs and asphalt roads, urban areas tend to be much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Ultimately, we're not going to solve any of these problems until we figure out a way to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But in the meantime, there are simple adaptive measures we can employ to cool down our cities: We can paint them. Hashem Akbari, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in cost-effective methods of combating the effects of climate change in urban areas, has shown that by painting roofs white, covering asphalt roadways with concrete-colored surfaces and planting shade trees, local temperatures could be reduced by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Akbari and colleagues reported in the journal Climatic Change last year that for every 100 square feet of black rooftop converted to white surface, the effects of roughly one ton of carbon dioxide would be offset. Painting streets and rooftops white may sound impractical, if not silly, but it's a realistic strategy - which is to say, it's effective and affordable. Indeed, for an initial expenditure of $1 billion, we could lighten enough Los Angeles streets and rooftops to reduce temperatures in the L.A. Basin more than global warming would increase them over the next 90 years. Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint, adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather, it will enable us to get by while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-made climate change. This may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten to swamp rational debate about climate policy, it's worth noting that coping with climate change is something we know how to do.

Oceans Answers

1nc Oceans Frontline

1. Offshore wind farms disrupt ocean flows – can’t predict any benefitsREILLY 08 Discovery News – NBC [Michael Reilly, Offshore Wind Power Could Alter Ocean Currents, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27681666/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/offshore-wind-power-could-alter-ocean-currents/#.U44MqPk_ClU]

Generating wind power at sea may disturb ocean currents and marine ecosystems, according to a new study.Offshore wind farms are common in Europe; Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom all have several active installations. Wind power in the United States is currently confined to dry land, but three installations are planned off the coast of New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware, totaling about 1,500 megawatts of generating capacity.Extracting energy from wind changes regional air currents, which can in turn affect how the nearby ocean circulates, according to Goran Brostrom of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo.In a paper published this month in Journal of Marine Systems, Brostrom shows in a model that winds swirling at 11 to 22 miles per hour downwind of large farms are uneven. As they blow over the ocean they can roil the waters, causing upwelling.The change in currents seems small — a nudge of just 3.3 feet per day — and the wind farms have to be around 1.9 square miles. But Brostrom said the effect is enough to bring nutrient-rich waters up from the depths, which marine life can thrive on."I think you will see a large effect over time," he said. "You will get more plankton blooming, and you will see more vibrant life overall at that place."Plankton blooms are infamous for causing toxic red tides and for sucking oxygen out of the water. But they can also be food sources for larger animals."Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of debate," Brostrom said. Though he stressed that the goal for any man-made object should be to minimize environmental impact, he added: "I'm an optimist; I think this could be beneficial to local fisheries."Such dreams of wind farms enriching ocean wildlife — or impacting it in any way — may be a bit premature, said Michael Dvorak of Stanford University. For one thing, all current farms are situated in water far shallower than the 98-foot depth assumed in Brostrom's paper. Some deeper farms have been proposed, but maintenance costs skyrocket the further from shore windmills are.And Brostrom's study is a very general model — ocean currents and marine life could be affected in very different ways depending on the location of the farm."If you want to understand how ocean currents are really going to be affected, you'll want to include the bathymetry at the site," Dvorak said, referring to analysis of underwater depth, as well as do a detailed, specific study of the area's ecosystem.Still, Dvorak pointed out Brostrom's study raises a point no one in the wind power industry had yet considered."People have looked at the climate effects of wind farms on land, but this is the first to bring up the question of ocean currents," he said. "This is something we should be looking at."

2. Not enough wind farms could be built – the impact is about all the oceans, even a few thousand wind farms would not cover a significant portion of the ocean.

3. Natural marine changes are inevitable—ocean species are highly resilientDulvy et al. 3 [Nicholas, (School of Marine Science and Tech. @ U. Newcastle), Yvonne Sadovy, (Dept. Ecology and Biodiversity @ U. Hong Kong), and John D. Reynolds, (Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation @ School of Bio. Sci. @ U. East Anglia), Fish and Fisheries, “Extinction vulnerability in marine populations,” 4:1, Blackwell-Synergy]

Marine fish populations are more variable and resilient than terrestrial populations Great natural variability in population size is sometimes invoked to argue that IUCN Red List criteria, as one example, are too conservative for marine fishes (Hudson and Mace 1996; Matsuda et al. 1997; Musick 1999; Powles et al. 2000; Hutchings 2001a).

For the (1996) IUCN list, a decline of 20% within 10 years or three generations (whichever is longer) triggered a classification of 'vulnerable', while declines of 50 and 80% led to classifications of 'endangered' and 'critically endangered', respectively. These criteria were designed to be applied to all animal and plant taxa, but many marine resource biologists feel that for marine fishes 'one size does not fit all' (see Hutchings 2001a). They argue that percent decline criteria are too conservative compared to the high natural variability of fish populations. Powles et al. (2000) cite the six-fold variation of the Pacific sardine population (Sardinops sagax, Clupeidae) and a nine-fold variation in northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax, Clupeidae) over the past two millennia to suggest that rapid declines and increases of up to 10-fold are relatively common in exploited fish stocks. It should, however, be borne in mind that the variation of exploited populations must be higher than unexploited populations because recruitment fluctuations increasingly drive population fluctuations when there are few adults (Pauly et al. 2002).

4. Oceans are doomed – overfishing, climate, and populations – things the aff doesn’t solveBerwyn 11 [August 30, 2011, Bob, “Study pinpoints key ocean conservation areas”, http://summitcountyvoice.com/2011/08/30/study-pinpoints-key-ocean-conservation-areas/]

Factoring in other impacts, such as overfishing and global climate change, would likely reveal even more negative effects on the nine conservation sites, the authors said. “The next 2 billion people we’re going to add to the planet are going to do much more damage to the ocean than the previous 2 billion did,” said Ehrlich, president of the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology. “Humans reach for the low-hanging fruit first, so to speak, but for the ocean that’s gone now.”

Ext 1 – Not Good for the Ocean

Wind Farms are neutral for ocean lifeClimate Consortium Denmark 12 [Offshore Wind Farms Can Benefit the Ecosystem, July 18, 2012, http://www.stateofgreen.com/en/Newsroom/Offshore-Wind-Farms-%E2%80%93-in-harmony-with-fish]

Neither a threat nor a benefitOverall, the present study indicates that wind farms represent neither a threat nor a direct benefit to sand eels in areas dominated by greater sand eels. The wind farms have become protected areas (MPA’s) and therefore might be beneficial for the fish life. At the same time, the study shows that fisheries were not affected after the establishment of the Horns Rev 1 Offshore Wind Farm.Read more about the study of Horns Rev 1The study can contribute to informing decision-making with regard to short term and long term impacts of offshore wind farm development in the North Sea. The findings could be used as the basis for the EU’s Marine strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), where the goal is to achieve good environmental status for European seas by 2020.

Construction disrupts ecosystemsHALLOWELL 13Associate at Kelley, Drye and Warren, LLP & former in-house counsel to the Maine Lobstermen’s Association [Michele Hallowell, Wind farms: Ecosystem effects differ depending on species, seafloor features, COMMERCIAL FISHERIES NEWS • JUNE 2013, http://www.kelleydrye.com/publications/articles/1732/_res/id=Files/index=0/CFN%20June%202013%20Hallowell%20Wind%20farm%20effects.pdf]

As the siting of ocean wind energy projects continues along the East Coast, many fishermen are left wondering how wind energy development will affect fishing resources. What is involved in testing an area for a wind farm and installing the turbine array? How will the underwater drilling, jet plowing, cable laying, and turbine installation affect fish, lobsters, and shellfish in an area? How will the resource respond once installation is complete? What will be the overall harm and benefit of a wind farm – or many of them – to target species? Scientists and fishermen know the answers to some of these questions already. Yet some effects of wind farms are poorly understood. On a recent trip to England, fishermen there provided anecdotal evidence of what they have seen to date (see CFN May 2013 for trip background). Their experiences provide US fishermen insight on what they can expect should a wind farm be sited where they fish. Developers interested in constructing an ocean-based wind farm have to characterize the site before installation can begin. Site characterization involves conducting many surveys and tests. Drilling into the seafloor and removing cores of sediment help developers determine the type of bottom and depth of material in a given area. Surveys of the area are conducted by towing instruments from vessels across the proposed area and by using remotely operated vehicles to roam the ocean floor and take pictures. Weather buoys and other meteorological towers also are installed. Once a site is characterized and chosen for construction, installation will begin. Cables will be laid on top of or buried under the seafloor. Burial often requires jet plowing horizontally below the seafloor. If necessary, rocks or other heavy structures may be piled on top of the cables, known as “mattressing,” to ensure they don’t move. Wind turbines either will be drilled into the seafloor at great depths or they will sit on top of the seafloor. To reduce scour, the piles will be jacketed or have rocks piled at their base. The spinning blade will be affixed to the turbine after the base is installed. During site characterization and construction, fishermen can expect an increase in underwater noise, vibration, and disturbance of the ocean floor. They also can expect an increase in vessel traffic and possible closure of certain areas. Testing can occur over the course of years or in spurts of condensed activity. We expect mariners notices will be issued alerting fishermen to any activity that would affect their safety or operations.

Ext 3 – Oceans Impact Answers

The environment is far more resilient than people assumeSagoff 97 [Mark, Senior Research Scholar @ Institute for Philosophy and Public policy in School of Public Affairs @ U. Maryland, William and Mary Law Review, “INSTITUTE OF BILL OF RIGHTS LAW SYMPOSIUM DEFINING TAKINGS: PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION: MUDDLE OR MUDDLE THROUGH? TAKINGS JURISPRUDENCE MEETS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT,” 38 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 825, March, L/N]

Although one may agree with ecologists such as Ehrlich and Raven that the earth stands on the brink of an episode of massive extinction, it may not follow from this grim fact that human beings will suffer as a result. On the contrary, skeptics such as science writer Colin Tudge have challenged biologists to explain why we need more than a tenth of the 10 to 100 million species that grace the earth. Noting that "cultivated systems often out-produce wild systems by 100-fold or more," Tudge declared that "the argument that humans need the variety of other species is, when you think about it, a theological one." n343 Tudge observed that "the elimination of all but a tiny minority of our fellow creatures does not affect the material well-being of humans one iota." n344 This skeptic challenged ecologists to list more than 10,000 species (other than unthreatened microbes) that are essential to ecosystem productivity or functioning. n345 "The human species could survive just as well if 99.9% of our fellow creatures went extinct, provided only that we retained the appropriate 0.1% that we need." n346 [*906] The monumental Global Biodiversity Assessment ("the Assessment") identified two positions with respect to redundancy of species. "At one extreme is the idea that each species is unique and important, such that its removal or loss will have demonstrable consequences to the functioning of the community or ecosystem." n347 The authors of the Assessment, a panel of eminent ecologists, endorsed this position, saying it is "unlikely that there is much, if any, ecological redundancy in communities over time scales of decades to centuries, the time period over which environmental policy should operate." n348 These eminent ecologists rejected the opposing view, "the notion that species overlap in function to a sufficient degree that removal or loss of a species will be compensated by others, with negligible overall consequences to the community or ecosystem." n349 Other biologists believe, however, that species are so fabulously redundant in the ecological functions they perform that the life-support systems and processes of the planet and ecological processes in general will function perfectly well with fewer of them, certainly fewer than the millions and millions we can expect to remain even if every threatened organism becomes extinct. n350 Even the kind of sparse and miserable world depicted in the movie Blade Runner could provide a "sustainable" context for the human economy as long as people forgot their aesthetic and moral commitment to the glory and beauty of the natural world. n351 The Assessment makes this point. "Although any ecosystem contains hundreds to thousands of species interacting among themselves and their physical environment, the emerging consensus is that the system is driven by a small number of . . . biotic variables on whose interactions the balance of species are, in a sense, carried along." n352 [*907] To make up your mind on the question of the functional redundancy of species, consider an endangered species of bird, plant, or insect and ask how the ecosystem would fare in its absence. The fact that the creature is endangered suggests an answer: it is already in limbo as far as ecosystem processes are concerned. What crucial ecological services does the black-capped vireo, for example, serve? Are any of the species threatened with extinction necessary to the provision of any ecosystem service on which humans depend? If so, which ones are they? Ecosystems and the species that compose them have changed, dramatically, continually, and totally in virtually every part of the United States. There is little ecological similarity, for example, between New England today and the land where the Pilgrims died. n353 In view of the constant reconfiguration of the biota, one may wonder why Americans have not suffered more as a result of ecological catastrophes. The cast of species in nearly every environment changes constantly-local extinction is commonplace in nature-but the crops still grow. Somehow, it seems, property values keep going up on Martha's Vineyard in spite of the tragic disappearance of the heath hen. One might argue that the sheer number and variety of creatures available to any ecosystem buffers that system against stress. Accordingly, we should be concerned if the "library" of creatures ready, willing, and able to colonize ecosystems gets too small. (Advances in genetic engineering may well permit us to write a large number of additions to that "library.") In the United States as in many other parts of the world, however, the number of species has been increasing dramatically, not decreasing, as a result of human activity. This is because the hordes of exotic species coming into ecosystems in the United States far exceed the number of species that are becoming extinct. Indeed, introductions may outnumber extinctions by more than ten to one, so that the United States is becoming more and more species-rich all

the time largely as a result of human action. n354 [*908] Peter Vitousek and colleagues estimate that over 1000 non-native plants grow in California alone; in Hawaii there are 861; in Florida, 1210. n355 In Florida more than 1000 non-native insects, 23 species of mammals, and about 11 exotic birds have established themselves. n356 Anyone who waters a lawn or hoes a garden knows how many weeds desire to grow there, how many birds and bugs visit the yard, and how many fungi, creepy-crawlies, and other odd life forms show forth when it rains. All belong to nature, from wherever they might hail, but not many homeowners would claim that there are too few of them. Now, not all exotic species provide ecosystem services; indeed, some may be disruptive or have no instrumental value. n357 This also may be true, of course, of native species as well, especially because all exotics are native somewhere. Certain exotic species, however, such as Kentucky blue grass, establish an area's sense of identity and place; others, such as the green crabs showing up around Martha's Vineyard, are nuisances. n358 Consider an analogy [*909] with human migration. Everyone knows that after a generation or two, immigrants to this country are hard to distinguish from everyone else. The vast majority of Americans did not evolve here, as it were, from hominids; most of us "came over" at one time or another. This is true of many of our fellow species as well, and they may fit in here just as well as we do. It is possible to distinguish exotic species from native ones for a period of time, just as we can distinguish immigrants from native-born Americans, but as the centuries roll by, species, like people, fit into the landscape or the society, changing and often enriching it. Shall we have a rule that a species had to come over on the Mayflower, as so many did, to count as "truly" American? Plainly not. When, then, is the cutoff date? Insofar as we are concerned with the absolute numbers of "rivets" holding ecosystems together, extinction seems not to pose a general problem because a far greater number of kinds of mammals, insects, fish, plants, and other creatures thrive on land and in water in America today than in prelapsarian times. n359 The Ecological Society of America has urged managers to maintain biological diversity as a critical component in strengthening ecosystems against disturbance. n360 Yet as Simon Levin observed, "much of the detail about species composition will be irrelevant in terms of influences on ecosystem properties." n361 [*910] He added: "For net primary productivity, as is likely to be the case for any system property, biodiversity matters only up to a point; above a certain level, increasing biodiversity is likely to make little difference." n362 What about the use of plants and animals in agriculture? There is no scarcity foreseeable. "Of an estimated 80,000 types of plants [we] know to be edible," a U.S. Department of the Interior document says, "only about 150 are extensively cultivated." n363 About twenty species, not one of which is endangered, provide ninety percent of the food the world takes from plants. n364 Any new food has to take "shelf space" or "market share" from one that is now produced. Corporations also find it difficult to create demand for a new product; for example, people are not inclined to eat paw-paws, even though they are delicious. It is hard enough to get people to eat their broccoli and lima beans. It is harder still to develop consumer demand for new foods. This may be the reason the Kraft Corporation does not prospect in remote places for rare and unusual plants and animals to add to the world's diet. Of the roughly 235,000 flowering plants and 325,000 nonflowering plants (including mosses, lichens, and seaweeds) available, farmers ignore virtually all of them in favor of a very few that are profitable. n365 To be sure, any of the more than 600,000 species of plants could have an application in agriculture, but would they be preferable to the species that are now dominant? Has anyone found any consumer demand for any of these half-million or more plants to replace rice or wheat in the human diet? There are reasons that farmers cultivate rice, wheat, and corn rather than, say, Furbish's lousewort. There are many kinds of louseworts, so named because these weeds were thought to cause lice in sheep. How many does agriculture really require? [*911] The species on which agriculture relies are domesticated, not naturally occurring; they are developed by artificial not natural selection; they might not be able to survive in the wild. n366 This argument is not intended to deny the religious, aesthetic, cultural, and moral reasons that command us to respect and protect the natural world. These spiritual and ethical values should evoke action, of course, but we should also recognize that they are spiritual and ethical values. We should recognize that ecosystems and all that dwell therein compel our moral respect, our aesthetic appreciation, and our spiritual veneration; we should clearly seek to achieve the goals of the ESA. There is no reason to assume, however, that these goals have anything to do with human well-being or welfare as economists understand that term. These are ethical goals, in other words, not economic ones. Protecting the marsh may be the right thing to do for moral, cultural, and spiritual reasons. We should do it-but someone will have to pay the costs. In the narrow sense of promoting human welfare, protecting nature often represents a net "cost," not a net "benefit." It is largely for moral, not economic, reasons-ethical, not prudential, reasons- that we care about all our fellow creatures. They are valuable as objects of love not as objects of use. What is good for [*912] the marsh may be good in itself even if it is not, in the economic sense, good for mankind. The most valuable things are quite useless.

Biodiversity isn’t key to human survivalMaier 9 [Don, Independent Environmental Scholar, “What’s So Good about Biodiversity? A Survey of Bad Answers”, Paper presented to the 6th Annual Joint International Society for Environmental Philosophy/ISEE Conference, May, http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org/ISEEIAEPpapers/2009/Maier.pdf]

One could rework Noss' statement once again to restrict the biodiversity it mentions to that which has accompanied the presence of H. sapiens on the planet. Its value then derives from all the biological factors that have sustained life that humanity has known. Human presence is extremely recent—something less than 200,000 years, so this is a considerable restriction. Yet even during man's brief tenure, not just the composition of biodiversity (which species exist), but also species diversity in its proper sense, without regard to composition, have dramatically changed—and largely because of changes induced by humans. As conservation biologist Martin Jenkins remarks, There is growing consensus that from around 40,000 to 50,000 years

ago onward, humans have been directly or indirectly responsible for the extinction in many parts of the world of all or most of the larger terrestrial animal species.146 The component set of species has undergone remarkable transformation due to human influences. The component set of ecosystems has also been transformed as a result. This is the point of the concept of anthropogenic biomes (mentioned in Section 4.3 on "The moral force of biodiversity"), none of which existed 60,000 years ago. The biomes from that time are now extinct, like many of the species that occupied them, and largely on account of their extinction. So apparently, whatever biological conditions have sustained life over the last 200,000 years have also sustained so many changes in life that the planet now is hard to recognize as a later biotic and environmental version of its former self. One might insist that the concern for biodiversity should be restricted even further—to the sustaining of life (just) as we know it right now in the early 21st century. But with this additional restriction, we have finally reached a confluence with the just-so model of biodiversity value and its attendant problems—discussed in Section 4.1.4 on "The just-so model".

Marginal losses don’t erode ecosystem resilience—there’s more biodiversity than we could possibly need—and we can just create more.Sagoff 8 [Mark, Senior Research Scholar @ Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy @ School of Public Policy @ U. Maryland, Environmental Values, “On the Economic Value of Ecosystem Services”, 17:2, 239-257, EBSCO]

What about the economic value of biodiversity? Biodiversity represents nature’s greatest largess or excess since species appear nearly as numerous as the stars except that ‘scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than how many species there are on Earth’.41 The ‘next’ or ‘incremental’ thousand species taken at random would not fetch a market price because another thousand are immediately available, and another thousand after that . No one has suggested an economic application, moreover, for any of the thousand species in the USA listed as threatened.42 To defend the ‘marginal’ value of biodiversity on economic grounds is to trade convincing spiritual, aesthetic and ethical arguments for bogus, pretextual and disingenuous economic ones.43 As David Ehrenfeld has written, We do not know how many [plant] species are needed to keep the planet green and healthy, but it seems very unlikely to be anywhere near the more than quarter of a million we have now. Even a mighty dominant like the American chestnut, extending over half a continent, all but disappeared without bringing the eastern deciduous forest down with it. And if we turn to the invertebrates, the source of nearly all biological diversity, what biologist is willing to find a value—conventional or ecological—for all 600,000-plus species of beetles?44 The disappearance in the wild even of agriculturally useful species appears to have no effect on production. The last wild aurochs, the progenitor of dairy and beef cattle, went extinct in Poland in 1742, yet no one believes the beef industry is threatened. The genetic material of crop species is contained in tens of thousands of landraces and cultivars in use—rice is an example—and does not depend on the persistence of wild ancestral types. Genetic engineering can introduce DNA from virtually any species into virtually any other—which allows for the unlimited creation of biodiversity. A neighbour of mine has collected about 4,000 different species of insects on his two-acre property in Silver Spring, Maryland. These include 500 kinds of Lepidoptera (mostly moths)—half the number another entomologist found at his residence.45 When you factor in plants and animals the amount of ‘backyard biodiversity’ in suburbs is astounding and far greater than you can imagine.46 Biodiversity generates no price ‘at the margin’ because nature provides far more of it than anyone could possibly administer. If one kind of moth flies off, you can easily attract hundreds of others. The price of a building lot in suburban Maryland, where I live, is a function of its proximity to good schools and to Washington, DC. The thousands of kinds of insects, weeds, microbes, etc. that nature lavishes on the typical suburban lot do not increase its price. No one wants to invest to see if any of these creatures contains a cancer-curing drug, although a raccoon in my attic did test positive for rabies.47 No one thinks that property values are a function of biodiversity; no one could suppose that a scarcity of critters looms that might create a competitive advantage for housing lots that are more generously endowed with deer, opossums, muskrats, raccoons, birds or beavers. (A neighbour who has a swimming pool plays unwilling summer host to a beaver who at night jumps off the diving board into the pool, swims around, and jumps again.) An astronomical variety of biodiversity is thrown in with every acre zoned for residential use. Buy an acre or two, and an immense amount of biodiversity is yours for nothing.

Ocean Acidification Impact Answers

Meta-analysis confirms acidification has only minor effects. And experiments OVERESTIMATE the effects by ignoring adaptation and community effects.Hendriks et al., ‘10 [Iris, C.M. Duarte, and M. Alvarez, Department of Global Change Research – Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Studies, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, “Vulnerability of marine biodiversity to ocean acidification: A meta-analysis”, 86(2), January] The meta-analysis of our database,   which includes 372 published experimental evaluations   with control values assembled from literature (Supplementary information Table S1), confirmed that acidification effects differed considerably across taxonomic groups   and functions , but that the magnitude of the changes were, overall, modest   for acidification levels within ranges expected during this century .  Acidification does not occur in isolation, but in concert with other challenges such as warming, eutrophication, and increased UV radiation.   There are, however, few studies examining the interactive effect of acidification and other direct or indirect results of global change, which may aggravate the effect of ocean acidification on marine organisms.  This analysis suggests that marine biota do not respond uniformly to ocean acidification. Some experiments report significant impacts for vulnerable taxa at pCO2 values expected within the 21st century, but there was no consistent evidence that suggests biological rates ,   apart from calcification for one functional group, the bivalves , might be significantly suppressed   across the range of pCO2 anticipated for the 21st century . Some organisms , particularly autotrophs,   even showed enhanced growth   under elevated p CO2 .  The data do suggest that calcification   rate , the most sensitive process responding directly to ocean acidification (Gattuso et al., 1998 J.P. Gattuso, M. Frankignoulle, I. Bourrge, S. Romaine and R.W. Buddemeier, Effect of calcium carbonate saturation of seawater on coral calcification, Global and Planetary Change 18 (1998), pp. 37–46. Article | PDF (107 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (153)[Gattuso et al., 1998], [Gazeau et al., 2007], [Leclercq et al., 2000] and [Riebesell et al., 2000]), will decline by , on average,   25%  at elevated pCO2 values of 731–759 ppmv. These values will be reached within the 21st century (IPCC, 2007). However , the 25% decline in biological calcification rates at elevated pCO2 values of approximately 750 ppmv is likely to be an upper limit, considering that all experiments involve the abrupt exposure of organisms to elevated pCO2 values, while the gradual increase in pCO2   that is occurring in naturemay allow   adaptive and selective processes to operate  (Widdicombe et al., 2008). These   gradual   changes take place on the scale of decades, permitting adaptation of organisms even including genetic selection. Short-term experimental results are likely to overestimate the impacts of acidification   rates   on marine organisms. The ambition and sophistication of experimental approaches need be expanded, to assess complex communities, rather than single species, and to assess responses to enhanced CO2 over long terms. Such long-term experiments to observe community responses to long-term exposure to enhanced CO2 have been successfully conducted for terrestrial systems. Experiments comparable to those conducted on land (e.g. Hättenschwiler et al., 2003), should be planned and conducted. The only such experiment so far available is the Biosphere 2 experiment, where responses of coral-reef communities included in the “ocean” biome of the Biosphere 2 facility were assessed (Atkinson et al., 1999).  Also important,   most experiments assessed organisms in isolation, rather than whole communities, whereas   the responses within the community may buffer the impacts .  For instance, seagrass photosynthetic rates may increase   by 50% with increased CO2, which may deplete the CO2 pool,   maintaining an elevated pH that may protect associated calcifying organisms   from the impacts of ocean acidification .                                                                                                                                                

And there’s no evidence that proves any harms to individual organisms become species-wide.Hendriks and Duarte, ‘10 [Iris, and C.M., Department of Global Change Research – Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Studies, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, “Ocean acidification: Separating evidence from judgment – A reply to Dupont et al.”, 89(2), September] Extrapolating beyond the evidence derived from the experimental assessments conducted thus far involves many uncertainties. For instance, calcification is the process most sensitive to ocean acidification, with an average decline by about 25% over the range of pCO2 likely observed along the 21st century, as indicated by the analysis presented by Hendriks et al. (2010), corroborated by new evidence (Table 1). To infer, based on this evidence, what the significance of this reduction is for the biology of calcifying organisms involves a value judgment that needs to be clearly separated from the evidence at hand. Reduced calcification has been often claimed to compromise the species affected, however, there is, to the best of our knowledge, no evidence to show that a 25% reduction in calcification rates maybe conducive to population decline or loss of fitness by either affecting recruitment or mortality. That the 25% reduction in calcification rate, on average, was statistically significantacross experiments (Hendriks et al., 2010), does not necessarily imply that it was biologically significant. Indeed a

25% reduction in calcification rates between 2010 and 2100 implies a rate of decline of only about 0.28% year−1, too low to compromise organisms on a year-to-year basis. Regrettably, unambiguous evidence for population-level impacts is nil and the question that must be resolved before continuing to assert that ocean acidification is a threat to calcifying organisms is what is the threshold for reduced calcification before populations decline. We submit that this maybe entirely unknown, pointing to a pressing research need to evaluate the biological significance of ocean acidification. Indeed, consideration of the impact of ocean acidification should consider that ocean acidification does not operate on isolated species, but on species embedded in ecosystems,   and does not occur in isolation of other perturbations that have already occurred, such as increased warming and UV, proliferating hypoxia, overfishing and eutrophication, all of which are already – not in a distant future – affecting marine species and ecosystems at the population and ecosystem level. Hence, when all these factors are allowed to operate the 0.3% reduction in calcification rate per year implicit in the 25% reduction by 2100 might not be a significant source of population decline.  Lack of knowledge does not dissipate concern, as the precautionary principle must prevail in situations where uncertainties preclude evaluation of impacts on species and ecosystems, as agreed by the Convention of Biological Diversity (principle 15, Report A/CONF.151/26 (Vol I)), that states that “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (Nations, 1992). Hence, concern that ocean acidification may negatively impact some species should suffice to prompt action to reduce CO2 emissions, without a need to overstate the case beyond the boundaries of scientific knowledge.  The paradigm that “ocean acidification will be a major threat for marine species and ecosystems” enunciated by Dupont et al., and implicit in many publications and reports, is a value judgment that lies beyond available scientific evidence. The extent of the threat remains to be robustly quantified and will certainly not be equally severe for all marine species and ecosystems, since some will not suffer or even benefit from increased ocean CO2 ([Iglesias-Rodriguez et al., 2008], [Ries et al., 2009] and [Hendriks et al., 2010]). Evidence that there are species-specific differences in the response to ocean acidification is increasing also for vulnerable life stages like larvae (Kurihara, 2008) and even within one single species studies find contrasting results, such as in the case of coccolithophores (Ridgwell et al., 2009 A. Ridgwell et al., From laboratory manipulations to Earth system models: scaling calcification impacts of ocean acidification, Biogeosciences 6 (2009), pp. 2611–2623. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (2)Ridgwell et al., 2009). 

History disproves any impact to acidification.Erba et al, 2010 [Elisabetta, *PhD Earth Sciences and Assistant Prof. Earth Sciences – U. Milan, Cinzia Bottini, **PhD Candidate in Earth, Env. and Biodiversity – U. Milan, Helmut Weissert, ***Prof. Earth Sciences and Geology – Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule and Pres. Swiss Geological Institute, and Christina E. Keller, ****Dept. Earth Sciences – Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Science, “Calcareous Nannoplankton Response to Surface-Water Acidification Around Oceanic Anoxic Event”, 329(5990), July] The dissolution of an atmospheric CO2 surplus [that is, over 500 parts per million (ppm)] in the ocean lowers pH and reduces the CaCO3 saturation state, consequently accelerating carbonate dissolution in the deep sea (1). The effect of modern surface-water acidification on organisms with CaCO3-based skeletons or tests, such as calcareous nannoplankton, remains elusive (2–6). Throughout Earth’s history, there is evidence of large CO2 releases, greenhouse conditions, ocean acidification, and major changes in biota, particularly in marine calcifiers (7). In many cases, the geological record indicates that ocean biota can adapt to increased acidity;however, past examples of ocean acidification occurred over tens of thousands of years, giving time for life to adjust to CO2 concentrations as high as 2000 to 3000 ppm (7).  The early Aptian [121 to 118 million years ago (Ma)] represents a case history of excess CO2 derived from a major volcanic episode, namely the emplacement of the Ontong Java Plateau (OJP) (8, 9), which is marked by changes in the evolutionary rates, species richness, abundance, and calcite production of calcareous nannoplankton (10–12). These changes occurred during Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (OAE1a) (~120 Ma), which was a time of severe global warming (13, 14). Although global anoxia and enhanced organic matter burial are the most striking and intriguing paleoceanograhic phenomena during this event,OAE1a sediments reveal a sequence of CO2 pulses (15) and weathering changes (16). For example, the cutoff of carbonates during OAE1a is the result of volcanogenic CO2-related ocean acidification (7, 10, 17).  We analyzed calcareous nannofossil assemblages from two drill sites in the Tethys (Cismon core) and Pacific [Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) site 463] Oceans (fig. S1) (18). At both sites, nannofossil changes integrated with geochemical and cyclochronological data (15, 19) identify and date the effects of acidification on calcareous nannoplankton. Shortly before magnetic chron M0 (Fig. 1), at 121.3 Ma (19), nannoconid abundance declined and nannofossil paleofluxes (tracing nannoplankton carbonate production and accumulation) decreased as response to a major injection of volcanogenic CO2. Later, a sharp nannoconid crisis at 120.25 Ma was part of a global calcification failure of planktonic and benthic calcifiers in pelagic and neritic settings under excess CO2 in the ocean-atmosphere system (17). During the 1-million-year-long interval between these two events, the geological record reveals subtle effects of ocean acidification traced only by nannofossils, and specifically by the heavily calcified nannoconids, with trivial effects on other coccoliths and apparently no evidence in the lithologic and geochemical records. Although the negative carbon isotopic event (CIE) at the beginning of global anoxia (~120 Ma) coincides with the drop in carbonate content, there was an increase in relative abundance of Biscutum constans, Zeugrhabdotus erectus, and Discorhabdus rotatorius, represented by dwarfed specimens (Fig. 1). Size variation was species-specific at both sites, because B. constans displays the most pronounced morphometric decrease (a volume/mass reduction of 50 to 60% for single coccoliths), whereas Z. erectus diminishes in size to a lesser extent (a volume/mass reduction of 30 to 40% for single coccoliths). D. rotatorius also exhibits smaller-than-normal sizes throughout the studied interval, reaching minimum dimensions in the CIE (a volume/mass reduction of 5 to 10% for single coccoliths in the study interval, but up to 70% with respect to the holotype). Watznaueria barnesiae shows minor changes in abundance and average size, but several malformed/deformed specimens occur in the CIE interval (fig. S2). 

Coral Reef Impact Answers

Coral Reef are adaptingHoffman 9 [Doug, “Heat-resistant Corals Ignore Climate Change Threats,” 5-26, http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/heat-resistant-corals-ignore-climate-change-threats]

Among the many catastrophes that are to befall our world due to global warming, the imminent demise of coral reefs is one of the worst. According to climate change proponents, as waters warm the ocean's reefs will bleach out and die, leaving the seas aquatic deserts, devoid of life. Now comes news that scientists have discovered live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the oceans are supposed to get 100 years from now , according to IPCC predictions. Looks like the corals didn't read the IPCC reports.Climate catastrophists have warned that more than half of the world's coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change. Supposedly, corals—tiny sea creatures that, working together, manage to build gigantic ocean reefs—are so delicate that a shift in water temperature of little more than 1 degree Celsius can cause them to wither and die. Corals create the most diverse ecosystems in the oceans: the beautiful and vibrant tropical reefs. If corals were to go extinct, the repercussions would likely affect all life on Earth.Corals live in a symbiotic relationship with tiny, single-celled algae. It's a partnership, with the corals provide a home for the algae and the algae provide nourishment for the corals. Rising temperatures can stress the algae, causing them to stop producing food. The corals evict the deadbeat algae, spit them out to fend for themselves. Without their algal partners, the reefs die and turn stark white, an event referred to as coral bleaching.In a report this month in Marine Ecology Progress Series, Stanford University scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually be able to shrug off the worst of the IPCC's predicted global warming. They discovered that some corals resist bleaching by hosting types of algae that can handle the heat, while others swap out the heat-stressed algae for tougher, heat-resistant strains.“The most exciting thing was discovering live, healthy corals on reefs already as hot as the ocean is likely to get 100 years from now,” said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of biology and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. “Corals are certainly threatened by environmental change, but this research has really sparked the notion that corals may be tougher than we thought.”For their investigations, Palumbi and Tom Oliver, a former student, traveled to Ofu Island in American Samoa. Ofu, a tropical coral reef marine reserve, has remained healthy despite gradually warming waters. In cooler lagoons, Oliver found only a handful of corals that host heat-resistant algae exclusively. But in hotter pools, he observed a direct increase in the proportion of heat-resistant symbionts, suggesting that some corals had swapped out the heat-sensitive algae for more robust types. “These findings show that, given enough time, many corals can match hotter environments by hosting heat-resistant symbionts,” Oliver explained.The whole matter of coral delicacy is a bit puzzling, since reef building corals have been around since at least the Permian period. All corals in the sea, particularly the familiar kinds that form reefs, have hard external skeletons. In a 2006 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers led by Allen Collins dated the origin of stony corals to between 240 and 288 million years ago, much more closely matching the fossil record of corals than earlier estimates.This means that corals survived the worst ever mass extinction event in the history of Earth—the Permian-Triassic Extinction, 251 million years ago—and lived through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. During this span of nearly 200 million years, CO2   levels were 5-10 times higher than they are now with temperatures as much as 10ºC higher than today.. After surviving the event that killed off the dinosaurs, corals have remained the ocean's primary reef builders during the Cenozoic era, roughly the past 63 million years. Scientists should have known that any creatures who can live through all that are tough enough to put up with slight fluctuations in water temperature.

Solvency Answers

1nc Solvency Frontline

1. Technology is not ready and no one will investUS Department of Energy, 2011 (A National Offshore Wind Strategy: Creating an Offshore Wind Strategy in the United States, February 2011, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/national_offshore_wind_strategy.pdf)

Significant challenges to offshore wind power deployment related to resource characterization, grid interconnection and operation, and infrastructure will need to be overcome. The offshore wind resource is not well characterized. This significantly increases uncertainty related to potential project power production and turbine and array design considerations, which in turn increase financing costs. The implications for adding large amounts of offshore wind generation to the power system need to be better understood to ensure reliable integration

and to evaluate the need for additional grid infrastructure such as an offshore transmission backbone. Finally, with current technology, cost ‐ effective installation of offshore wind turbines requires specialized vessels, purpose ‐ built portside infrastructure, robust undersea electricity transmission lines, and grid interconnections . These vessels and this infrastructure do not currently exist in the U.S . Although foreign ‐ flagged turbine installation and maintenance vessels exist, legislation such as the Jones Act limits the ability of these vessels to operate in U.S. waters.

2. economics deter investment Sims, 13 (Douglass, Fulfilling the Promise of U.S. Offshore Wind:¶ Targeted State Investment Policies to Put an¶ Abundant Renewable Resource within Reach, February 2013, http://www.nrdc.org/business/files/offshore-wind-investment.pdf)

So, what is going wrong? Why is investment flowing in other ¶ places but not here? Enormous improvements have been ¶ made on siting and permitting , such that they are not the ¶ main bottlenecks . As discussed in detail in the

National¶ Wildlife Federation’s recent report on offshore wind,¶ these impediments are being overcome as overlapping ¶ governmental entities have begun working together.6 But¶ there remain fundamental challenges ahead. The underlying ¶ limiting factor for offshore wind, a factor not found in places¶ where the sector has advanced, is that the basic economic¶ and financial conditions for offshore wind success are not in ¶ place. Without them, investors are not comfortable providing ¶ capital for these projects, and the sector inevitably will¶ struggle to get off the ground.

3. Reducing regulation isn’t enough – need more supportPortman, 10 (Michelle, Marine Renewable Energy Policy, Oceanography, Vol. 23, No. 2, http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/23-2_portman.pdf)

Overall, poor data on the resource ¶ potential of ocean energy has hindered ¶ widespread support for policies that ¶ could jumpstart marine renewable ¶ energy initiatives . More research funding ¶ needs to go into understanding the ¶ scale of ocean energy as a resource ¶ and disseminating this information .¶ Regarding technological impediments ¶ and development of the nascent offshore ¶ sector , policies should aid the demonstration of full-scale prototypes because lack of such demonstration projects is an ¶ identified barrier

to development (AEA¶ Energy & Environment, 2006). Programs¶ and policies should be available particu¶ -¶ larly to offset the exorbitant cost of¶ connecting demonstration projects to the electricity grid.

Ext 1 – No Technology Yet

Cant solve—need onshore development and port technologyKelly-Detwiler, 13 (Peter, In A Bold Move, Massachusetts Stakes Out Its Role in US Offshore Wind Development, February 21st, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2013/02/21/in-a-bold-move-massachusetts-stakes-out-its-role-in-us-offshore-wind-development/)

Turning that wind into energy will require the development of multiple wind farms and hundreds – if not

thousands – of turbines. And if the European experience is anything to go by, it requires a significant investment in onshore infrastructure and supporting industries to make it happen. Massachusetts intends to position itself at the crux

of this development, and is therefore moving ahead with the infrastructure to make this happen. The Commonwealth has already developed the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s Wind Technology Testing Center in Charlestown, MA, just outside of Boston, where they are testing the enormous blade technologies necessary for offshore. The next step is to develop the requisite port facilities.

There are no ships for installationMcDonnell 2/28/13 (Tim McDonnell, Climate Desk Associate Producer, ¶ Top 4 Reasons the US Still Doesn't Have a Single Offshore Wind Turbine¶ http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/02/us-rough-seas-offshore-wind)3. Not a single ship in the Unites States is equipped to handle wind turbines: Forget about whales and yacht routes. How the hell do you go about lodging a 450-ton, over-400-foot tall turbine into the ocean floor? Answer: With one massive mother of a boat.But there's a problem, says Chris van Beek, Deepwater's president: "At this point, there is not an existing vessel in the US that can do this job."The world's relatively small fleet of turbine-ready ships—500-foot, $200 million behemoths—is docked primarily in Europe; an obscure 1920 law called the Jones Act requires ships sailing between two US ports to be US-flagged, and once the foundation of an offshore turbine is laid it counts as a "port." Consequently, turbine installation ships cruising in from, say, Hamburg, wouldn't be able to dock in the States.On top of that, given the pittance of offshore projects in the works in the United States, bringing the ships in from abroad can be cost-prohibitive. Offshore turbines could find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go.Weeks Marine of New Jersey is working to solve the problem by building the first country's first turbine ship. They've completed the hull and hope to have the boat seaworthy by 2014, possibly in time to chip in on putting up Cape Wind.

Ext 2 – too expensive

Offshore wind is too expensive to be competitive- incentives necessaryMcDonnell 2/28/13 (Tim McDonnell, Climate Desk Associate Producer, ¶ Top 4 Reasons the US Still Doesn't Have a Single Offshore Wind Turbine¶ http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/02/us-rough-seas-offshore-wind)"Jack-up" ships like this are needed to drive massive offshore wind turbines into the seafloor. There's not a single one in the US.Despite massive growth of the offshore wind industry in Europe, a blossoming array of land-based wind turbines stateside, and plenty of wind to spare, the United States has yet to sink even one turbine in the ocean. Not exactly the kind of leadership on renewables President Obama called for in his recent State of the Union address.Light is just beginning to flicker at the end of the tunnel: On Tuesday, outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a gathering of offshore industry leaders he was optimistic the long-embattled Cape Wind project would break ground before year's end. And in early January industry advocates managed to convince Congress to extend a critical tax incentive for another year.But America's small-yet-dedicated entrepreneurial corps of offshore developers are still chasing "wet steel," as they call it, while their European and Asian colleagues forge ahead on making offshore wind a basic component of their energy plans. So what's the holdup? Here's a look at the top reasons that offshore wind remains elusive in the United States:1. Begging bucks from Uncle Sam: The industry breathed a sigh of relief this year when Congress reupped the Production Tax Credit, which recoups wind developers 2.2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of power they produce, and the Incentive Tax Credit, which pays back 30 percent of a wind project's construction costs. It might sound like chump change, but the PTC alone amounts to $1 billion a year, and industry advocates insist that wind would hit the doldrums without these subsidies. Still, they hardly put wind on a level playing field with the lavishly subsidized (and lushly lobbied) fossil fuel industry.**That's especially a problem for offshore wind, says Thierry Aelens, an executive with German developer RWE. Higher construction and transmission costs make electricity from offshore over twice the price of onshore in the United States, he says, a tough pill for state regulators and utility operators to swallow, especially given the low cost of natural gas made possible by fracking. Today renewables startups rely heavily on private investment to get off the ground, but the industry needs better financial backing from the feds to help it compete with fossil fuels, Aelens says. "Germany is a fully subsidized system. Which technology get supported is fully in the hands of the government."

Offshore wind’s not cost competitive—their projections are wrongHowland 12 Caitlin holds an honors degree in economics from the University of Maine. Advisors for this thesis include Gary Hunt, PhD in Economics, Jeff Thaler, J.D. Yale, Andrew Goupee, PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Sharon Tisher, J.D. Harvard, Sharon Wagner, PhD in Engineering and Public Policy. “The Economics of Offshore Wind Energy,” May, http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=honorsOffshore wind will not be viable in the coming years without a carbon tax and a potential government subsidy. If no developers invest in a farm, learning curve effects will be stunted and not be able to take the course of action predicted. The effect of learning-by-doing over time is crucial to decreasing costs. If an aggressive pricing scheme on carbon is adopted, it is possible deepwater offshore wind energy could become competitive in less than two decades.

Offshore wind can’t compete with gas—nothing will get builtScheid 12/17—Brian Scheid, Inside Energy with Federal Lands [December 17, 2012, “Despite poor market fundamentals, feds pour money into offshore wind industry,” Lexis]

The Obama administration has picked a strange time to try and ramp up the offshore wind-power industry, as natural gas prices remain low, construction costs for offshore wind turbines are excessively high, and a major tax credit for the fledgling industry will expire at the end of this month unless Congress can find a way to extend it.But despite those unfavorable market fundamentals, the Energy Department said last week it intends to provide $170 million in federal funding for seven wind projects in state and federal waters offshore six states — if Congress approves the request.Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that with the government’s help, the seven projects — offshore Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Virginia — could be delivering electricity to the grid as soon as 2017."The United States has tremendous untapped clean energy resources, and it is important for us to develop technologies that will allow us to utilize those resources in ways that are economically viable," said Chu, adding that the hoped-for federal funding will "pave the way to a cleaner, more sustainable and more diverse domestic energy portfolio that develops every source of American energy."In a separate but related move, the Interior Department said it will begin gauging the wind industry's interest in leasing federal waters offshore North Carolina (IE, 29 October, 6). Tommy Beaudreau, the director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said the move "represents a significant step forward in facilitating the responsible development of renewable, clean energy offshore the United States.»But the administration’s push for the offshore wind-energy industry comes at a time when market fundamentals — particularly low gas prices — may be so uncompetitive that a single wind facility may never be built . In October , for example, Interior gave NRG Bluewater Wind Delaware the exclusive right to build a wind farm on about 150 square miles of federal waters offshore Delaware. But it's unclear if that ambitious project will actually be built, due to low gas prices, high project costs and capacity constraints .

Ext 3 – States Less Complicated

The aff has it backwards—states are less complicated than federal. The plan will solidify more complicated regulations. Fleischauer, 10—an attorney with the Houston law firm of Slobin & Slobin P.C. His practice focuses on business and commercial real estate law. http://slobinlaw.com (Patricia, “Regulatory Uncertainty Hinders Offshore Wind Development,” 3-1-10, http://www.elp.com/articles/print/volume-88/issue-2/sections/regulatory-uncertainty.html)

As a result, the permitting process likely will be lengthier than what state programs anticipate. More important,

states’ efforts to spur offshore development through expedited permitting will be fruitless unless federal agency processes are similarly focused . This may include rules such as FERC’s requirements that projects must be of limited

size, removable and easily shut down. The goal of FERC pilot project licensing is to allow for rapid installation, environmental testing and operation to demonstrate technologies and analyze environmental issues. The knowledge gained would help enormously in boosting full-scale offshore development. ¶ A traditional permitting approach is not adequately fostering offshore wind development. If the nation is serious about harnessing wind energy to help meet RPS and energy

independence goals, a solution to the permitting conundrum is imperative to expedite sorely needed demonstration projects in state waters.

State permitting is easierVan Cleave, 10 (FB, “Offshore Wind Energy Permitting:¶ A Survey of U.S. Project Developers,” November 2012, http://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/pnnl-20024.pdf)

Developers reported a disconnect between support at the top of Bureau of Ocean ¶ Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (¶ BOEMRE; formerly Minerals Management Service¶ )¶ and slowing of progress to a standstill at the permit processing level within age ¶ ncies, shifting ¶ requirements (“we saw goalposts move

constantly”), and that “ state permitting is relatively straight ¶ forward and easy [compared to the federal process]”.¶ Developers noted that clear instructions from agencies were often lacking as many st¶ ate or federal¶ agencies are developing a permitting process at the same time they are trying to permit the first wave of¶ projects. Developers also noted a lack of deadlines and review timelines for response from federal¶ agencies and expressed frustration¶ with this additional uncertainty.¶ 1¶ Generally, developers working at the ¶ state level , in various states, expressed less discontent with the permitting process. Frustration with the ¶ federal permitting process was common to all respondents working at the fe ¶ deral level.

Ext 3 – Permitting Now

Status quo collaboration solves—pre-emption isn’t key US Department of Energy, 2011 (A National Offshore Wind Strategy: Creating an Offshore Wind Strategy in the United States, February 2011, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/national_offshore_wind_strategy.pdf)

For the past two years, the Department of the Interior has been actively engaged in facilitating the commercial ‐ scale development of offshore wind, particularly along the Atlantic OCS. In April 2009, President Barack Obama and Interior

Secretary Ken Salazar announced the final regulatory framework for renewable energy development on the OCS. These new regulations establish the process BOEMRE will use for granting leases, easements, and rights ‐ of ‐ way for offshore renewable energy development activities, such as the siting and construction of wind generation facilities on the OCS.¶ The new regulations encourage collaboration among

stakeholders, particularly federal, state, and tribal governments, by allowing BOEMRE to use intergovernmental, state ‐ based task forces in carrying out its responsibilities for authorizing OCS renewable energy activities . These task forces facilitate communication between BOEMRE and state, local, tribal, and federal stakeholders concerning commercial renewable energy leasing and development on the OCS and have served as a forum to collect data about existing resources and uses present along the Atlantic OCS.

Hurricanes Answers

Natural Disaster Impact Answers

Impact is exaggerated – disasters get media sensationalizedCOCKBURN 11 Middle East correspondent since 1979 for the Financial Times and, presently, The Independent [Patrick Cockburn, When a natural disaster happens, we watch from afar, transfixed by dramatic news reports. But how accurate is the picture?, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/catastrophe-on-camera-why-media-coverage-of-natural-disasters-is-flawed-2189032.html]

The media generally assume that news of war, crime and natural disasters will always win an audience. "If it bleeds, it leads," is a well-tried adage of American journalism. Of the three categories, coverage of war has attracted criticism for its lies, jingoism and general bias. Crime reporting traditionally exaggerates the danger of violence in society, creating an unnecessary sense of insecurity.Media coverage of natural disasters – floods, blizzards, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes – is, on the contrary, largely accepted as an accurate reflection of what really happened. But in my experience, the opposite is true: the reporting of cataclysms or lesser disasters is often wildly misleading. Stereotyping is common: whichever the country involved, there are similar images of wrecked bridges, half-submerged houses and last-minute rescues.The scale of the disaster is difficult to assess from news coverage: are we seeing or reading about the worst examples of devastation, or are these the norm? Are victims in the hundreds or the millions? Most usually the extent of the damage and the number of casualties are exaggerated, particularly in the developed world. I remember covering floods on the Mississippi in the 1990s and watching as a wall of cameras and cameramen focused on a well-built house in a St Louis suburb which was slowly disappearing under the water. But just a few hundred yards away, ignored by all the cameramen, a long line of gamblers was walking unconcernedly along wooden walkways to board a river boat casino.The reporting of natural disasters appears easy, but it is difficult to do convincingly. Over the past year, a series of calamities or, at the least, surprisingly severe weather, has dominated the news for weeks at a time. Just over a year ago, Haiti had its worst earthquake in 200 years, which killed more than 250,000 people. In August, exceptionally heavy monsoon rain turned the Indus river into a vast dangerous lake, forcing millions of Pakistani farmers to flee their homes and take refuge on the embankments. Less devastating was unexpectedly heavy snow in Britain in December and the severe blizzard which struck New York at Christmas. In the first half of January, the news was once again being led by climatic disasters: the floods in Queensland and the mudslides in Brazil.All these events are dramatic and should be interesting, but the reporting of them is frequently repetitious and dull. This may be partly because news coverage of all disasters, actual or forecast, is delivered in similarly apocalyptic tones . Particularly in the US, weather dramas are so frequently predicted that dire warnings have long lost their impact. This helps to explain why so many people are caught by surprise when there is a real catastrophe, such as Hurricane Katrina breaking the levees protecting New Orleans in 2005 and flooding the city. US television news never admits the role it plays in ensuring that nobody takes warnings of floods and hurricanes too seriously because they have heard it all before.

Alternate causes make the impact inevitable –

A. Inequality & growthPAN AMERICAN HEALTH ORGANIZATION 06 [Pan American Health Organization, Jan 9, 2006, Why do natural disasters seem to be increasingly frequent and increasingly deadly?, http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/pr060109.htm]

"I don't like to use the term 'natural disasters'. Natural disasters would not have such a devastating effect on people's lives if they were not exposed to such risks in the first place." (Dr. Ciro Ugarte/PAHO)Natural phenomena are likely to affect more people because Earth's population has increased . According to the United Nations Population Fund, this stands at about 6.5 billion people and is projected to reach 9.1 billion people in 2050.Marko Kokic, spokesperson for WHO's Health Action in Crisis department, said that some communities are more vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters than 100 years ago because of ecological degradation. He said that, for example,

when tropical storms hit the Caribbean in September 2004, there was nothing to stop storm waters gathering and wreaking devastation in Haiti because of deforestation.

"We need to tackle the underlying issues, such as poverty and inequity," Kokic said, adding: "In many countries, people cut down trees because wood is the cheapest fuel".Disasters are also a consequence of development and industrialization. In Europe, experts believe that countries such as France and Germany are more adversely affected by floods today because major rivers, such as the Rhine, have been straightened to ease commercial traffic.

B. PovertyBRAINE 06 staffwriter for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) [Theresa Braine, “Poor and vulnerable people are usually the worst hit,” Washington, D.C., January 9, 2006 (PAHO), http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/pr060109.htm]

Experts agree that the poor are disproportionately hit. "In several of these countries, the poor people are looking for spaces to build their houses or their communities [and] they find spaces that are not already used," Ugarte said. "And those spaces that are not already used are usually the spaces at higher risk for natural phenomena. There's a huge relationship between this kind of damage and poverty. For this reason financial services play a role in both prevention, and damage limitation and recovery. A report entitled, Climate change futures: health ecological and economic dimensions, published in November 2005 assesses the risks generated by climate change. One of several scenarios "would involve blows to the world economy sufficiently severe to cripple the resilience that enables affluent countries to respond to catastrophes," according to the report, which was published by the Center for Health and Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School and sponsored by reinsurance company Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme. While it is important to encourage people, governments and companies to buy insurance, not everyone can afford it or see the need.

Off Case

Energy Prices Disad

1nc Prices link

Offshore wind raises electricity prices—transmission costsHarvey 13—Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, The Guardian [January 13, 2013, “Plan to link offshore windfarms to grid could cost £17bn,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/14/linking-offshore-wind-farms-to-grid]

The government's plans to bring more offshore wind power on to the grid are flawed and could lead to higher electricity prices for consumers , an influential committee of MPs has warned.

Offshore windfarms require heavy-duty transmission infrastructure to carry the power to land, and the provision of the cables needed has been a serious obstacle to the growth of the wind industry, as windfarms both on and offshore have had to wait for long periods to be connected.Under the government's current system, a licensing system allows National Grid and other providers to construct the transmission lines. But the public accounts committee has said that savings for consumers could be illusory, because of the way the licensing system has been designed.Ofgem said it was consulting on possible changes to the system that would solve the problems the MPs had identified in the first few projects.Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, said: "Not only is it unlikely that this new licensing system for bringing electricity from offshore windfarms on to the national grid will deliver any savings for consumers, it could well lead to higher prices . Indeed the terms of the licences appear to have been designed almost entirely to attract investors at the expense of securing a good deal for consumers."

A2 Cheap in Europe

Offshore wind is incredibly expensiveMakani Power 2/8/13 (The Advantages and Challenges of Offshore Wind¶

http://www.makanipower.com/2013/02/the-advantages-and-challenges-of-offshore-wind/)CHALLENGE: OFFSHORE WIND IS STILL EXPENSIVEScaling to gigawatt size projects will require the floating turbines still in development, which drive costs up substantially. The physics of conventional turbines result in a very unstable machine that requires massive ballast below the water to prevent tipping over. We know from industry partners that installed costs for fixed bottom offshore projects are currently around $5/Watt, more than double the costs onshore. The most successful floating pilot project — Statoil’s Hywind — cost a staggering $31/Watt to build, though that cost will clearly come down in commercial production.

Their evidence assumes fixed-bottom projects- those can’t happen in the US- raises costsMakani Power 2/8/13 (The Advantages and Challenges of Offshore Wind¶

http://www.makanipower.com/2013/02/the-advantages-and-challenges-of-offshore-wind/)

CHALLENGE: STUCK IN SHALLOW WATEREvery commercial wind turbine installed offshore uses a foundation on or in the seabed, which means that most projects exist in waters no deeper than 30 meters. Europe’s North Sea has an optimal combination of shallow water and strong winds, which explains the success of offshore wind in the region. The east coast of the US has similar conditions, but the continental shelf on the west coast falls off steeply, making fixed-bottom wind projects unlikely. Floating platform designs are in development, but add more cost and complexity. For now, conventional offshore wind can only access a small fraction of the available resource.

Environment Disad

Wind Farm Construction Bad

Wind farms destroy local habitat – makes it inhabitable, degrades soil, and airADAMS 06 J.D. 2006, Northwestern School of Law. Idaho Court of Appeals Clerk [Gregory M. Adams, Bringing Green Power to the Public Lands: The Bureau of Land Management's Authority and Discretion to Regulate Wind-Energy Developments, Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation, 21 J. Envtl. L. & Litig. 445]

The footprint a wind farm leaves on the land can be significant in undeveloped areas valued for their scenic attributes. n16 The footprint can include turbines, structures, power stations, roads, new transmission lines, and even on-site concrete-batching plants. n17 Construction requires digging and blasting holes for tower foundations

thirty-five to forty feet deep and pouring dozens of cubic yards of concrete per turbine. n18 Developers must also clear and compact up to three acres for a "staging area" to erect each turbine. n19 Even after on-site mitigation and restoration measures, construction and maintenance of the facilities leaves a footprint of five percent to ten percent of the acreage of the entire site for the life of the project. n20 Construction of roads to access the site also creates a significant footprint and a permanent [*451] alteration of a previously undeveloped area. n21 This can create significant environmental impacts including landscape degradation, unfavorable aesthetics, and noise, all of which can engender local opposition. n22Wind-farm footprints can significantly degrade the landscape. n23 In the past, groups have opposed wind farms in an effort to stop the industrialization of rural landscapes. n24 Of all the impacts to a rural landscape caused by wind farms, extensive road building can be the most significant. n25 If existing roads cannot be used, developers must remove massive amounts of soil and construct roads in hilly terrain typical of most wind-farm sites. n26 Such construction permanently scars the landscape. Extensive road construction and use can also cause fugitive dust to escape into the air, degrading air quality and visibility. n27 The footprint could also negatively affect cultural resources and values that the land may contain. n28Many people are also opposed to the aesthetic impairment of the landscape caused by a large group of wind turbines. n29 Wind farms are often industrial in appearance, a characteristic that is incompatible with natural landscapes typical of BLM lands. n30 While efforts can be made to blend turbines with the surrounding rural area, some people still find large, modern wind turbines offensive. n31 [*452] On BLM lands, these visual impacts can be especially difficult to avoid with mitigation measures because turbines are large and cannot be hidden easily in open spaces that are typical of BLM land. n32

Politics Disad

1nc – Plan is Unpopular

Plan’s massively unpopular—triggers public and Congressional backlash—tied into the broader green energy debateSperry 12 Todd is a writer for CNN. “Wind farm gets US approval despite controversy,” Aug 16, http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/us/wind-farm-faa/index.html

Washington (CNN) -- A massive offshore wind farm planned for Cape Cod that has generated fierce political and legal controversy has cleared all federal and state regulatory hurdles. The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday the Cape

Wind project, the first of its kind in the United States, would not interfere with air traffic navigation and could proceed with certain conditions. Previous agency approvals were challenged in court, including a ruling last year that forced the latest FAA safety evaluation. A leading opposition group said another legal challenge was possible. The Obama administration first approved the power generating project, which has now been on the books for more than a decade, in April 2010 despite opposition from residents. Opponents over the years have included the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts whose family compound is in Hyannis Port. 125 years of wind power Critics claim the wind farm with its 130 turbines would threaten wildlife and aesthetics of Nantucket Sound. Some local residents also fear it will drive down property values. The administration has pushed a "green energy" agenda nationally as a way to create jobs and lessen U.S. dependence on oil imports. That effort, however, has been sharply criticized by congressional Republicans who have said certain high-profile projects are politically driven. They also have skewered certain Energy Department programs that extended millions in taxpayer loans and other aid to alternative energy companies or projects that faltered or did not meet expectations. The Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating the political assertions around Cape Wind as part of a broader review of "green energy" projects supported by the administration.

2NC—Offshore Wind Links

Offshore wind empirically triggers massive controversyDiMugno 12 Laura is a writer for North American Wind Power. “With latest FAA ruling, is it full steam ahead for Cape Wind?” Aug 17, http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/08/17/with-latest-faa-ruling-is-it-full-steam-ahead-for-cape-wind/

Despite this latest decision, it remains to be seen whether the controversy surrounding the proposed offshore wind farm will finally come to a close. Several groups still oppose the project—the most vocal of which has been APNS—and aviation concerns are only one component of their argument against Cape Wind. Recently, APNS went so far as to claim that there were political motivations behind the FAA’s decision. “Cape Wind continues to face serious and growing problems, with investigations being launched into the project’s political maneuvering, four federal lawsuits pending, and a recent federal court decision to revoke Cape Wind’s aviation safety permit,” the group stated on its website. (The last claim has been negated with this latest FAA decision.)

Obama will get blame for the plan and it will sap capitalDelamaide 10 Darrell is a writer at Oil Price.com [“U.S. Approval of Cape Cod Offshore Wind Project Will Not End Controversy,” April 30, http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/U.S.-Approval-Of-Cape-Cod-Offshore-Wind-Project-Will-Not-End-Controversy.html]

The Obama administration approved the controversial Cape Wind project, which calls for a wind farm of 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound and will be the first offshore wind project in the country. The announcement Wednesday was not a complete surprise after President Barack Obama on Tuesday toured the factory in Iowa that will supply the blades for the Cape Wind turbines. But it is sure to generate more controversy as opposition was voiced by everyone from environmental groups to Native American tribes to Cape Cod residents, who are disturbed at the prospect that they will see the wind turbines as specks on the horizon. The turbines will be five miles from shore at their closest point, and 14 miles and their most distant.

Plan causes controversy—empirically proven—GOP will accuse Obama of cheatingColman 12 Zack is a writer for The Hill. “Long-delayed offshore wind farm gets approval despite political pushback,” 8/16, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/243979-offshore-wind-farm-gets-approval-despite-political-pushbackA large proposed wind farm off the Massachusetts coast gained regulatory approval Wednesday amid complaints from GOP lawmakers that the White House inappropriately pushed for its acceptance. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) determined the 130-turbine Cape Wind project, located in the Nantucket Sound, posed no danger to air travel. The project has been in the planning process for more than a decade. “This FAA Determination of No Hazard is extremely robust, comprehensive and complete,” Mark Rodgers, spokesman for Cape Wind, told The Hill on Thursday. “We are pleased that the FAA was able to ignore political pressure of project opponents and that they did their job in a professional way reaching the same decision they have on three other occasions including twice under the Bush Administration to approve this project.” Rodgers said the FAA ruling means Cape Wind is now fully permitted. He noted it is the only U.S. offshore wind farm with federal and state approval, a commercial lease and a construction and operations plan. It also has power purchase agreements with Massachusetts electric utilities. But whether FAA’s ruling quiets some GOP lawmakers is uncertain. They want to investigate possible administration pressure on the agency to approve the project despite safety concerns from some FAA employees. Republicans Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.), House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Cliff Stearns (Fla.), a subcommittee chairman on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, all have called for a probe of Cape Wind. They say internal FAA documents show hesitancy about the project’s ability to avoid interfering with low-flying planes. The lawmakers allege the Obama administration used its influence to hush those fears.