1nc

Published on July 2016 | Categories: Documents | Downloads: 52 | Comments: 0 | Views: 692
of 14
Download PDF   Embed   Report

Comments

Content

1nc/2nc
US-China relations repairing now – new spending tanks it NYT 8/13 (Edward Wong, MA in International Studies and Journalism, UC Berkeley, Pulitzer Prize finalist in International Reporting, “U.S. Economic Woes Loom Over Biden Visit to China” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/world/asia/14china.html)
Over the winter, officials in China and the United States were trying to turn a new page in relations. In January, during a state visit to Washington by President Hu Jintao, leaders worked hard to dispel the rancor that had been slowly building. Soon after, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. committed to an earlier proposal to meet this summer with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who is expected to succeed Mr. Hu next year. But as Mr. Biden prepares to depart for China on Tuesday, a new uncertainty looms over relations. Chinese leaders are asking

sharp questions about the strength of the American economy and American leadership, because of the government’s struggle to meet its debt obligations and the partisan schisms and political paralysis that turned a problem into a crisis.
Mr. Biden postponed his original departure date in July to help hammer out the agreement that forestalled default on some obligations but failed to avert a downgrade of America’s AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. Xinhua, the state news agency, published a commentary demanding that the

United States “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means.” The uncertainty about America goes straight to China’s pockets: it holds more than $1.1 trillion in United States Treasury securities, making it the country’s largest foreign creditor. Some ordinary Chinese have publicly criticized the Chinese leadership for investing so much in American government securities. Europe’s continuing sovereign debt miseries, the specter of a possible double-dip recession in
the United States, and the turmoil in global markets last week have only heightened anxiety in China, whose economic growth depends to a large measure on its vast export sector. Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University, said he attended a meeting at the Ministry of Finance last week where officials were wringing their hands. “The feeling of everyone was that the world economy has just suddenly become very unpredictable,” he said. “No one wants to see the U.S. economy keep going downhill and a new financial crisis. China and the U.S. are very important in keeping the global economy stable.” As they get to know each other, Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi will no doubt discuss some of the security issues that have divided the two countries — American arms sales to Taiwan, North Korea’s nuclear program and tensions over the South China Sea. But the economic issues have moved to the fore. “The primary purpose of the trip, which was planned before recent economic problems, was

to build the relationship with Xi Jinping,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, who until April was the senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council. “Recent events in the economic sphere have undoubtedly put the U.S. economy and U.S. currency on the agenda.” Da Wei, deputy director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, said, “U.S. Treasury debt is the biggest concern since it’s about the safety of China’s financial investment.” As in the United States, domestic troubles in China have been taking precedence over foreign relations. The efforts of
Chinese leaders to maintain social stability have been challenged this summer by ethnic violence in the western region of Xinjiang and a remarkable surge of public criticism over the government’s handling of a deadly high-speed rail crash in Zhejiang Province.

US-China relations are crucial to solve every impact Hachigian and Peng 10 - Director of the Institute for American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (Nina, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress for US-China relations, for
senior political scientist at RAND J.D. Stanford. Yaun,. ‘The US-China Expectations Gap: An Exchange” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 52, no. 4, August-September 2010, pg 62-86) We find ourselves at a transitional moment in the global order. China, long a rising power, has now arrived on the world stage. The United States, for two decades the sole global superpower, is reeling from the global economic downturn and entangled in two difficult wars. Meanwhile,

global threats like the economic crisis, global warming and nuclear proliferation only grow more intense. These shifts in the international environment raise some major questions. To what extent do shared global challenges push the United States and China toward shared responsibility? What considerations will spur them to join or lead other nations
in collective action? What are the signs that China is ready to help solve global problems? What are the signs that the United States is genuinely ready to share leadership? What will be the consequences if US and Chinese foreign policies fail to coordinate on matters of

shared concern? The White House under President Barack Obama has outlined the contours of a national security paradigm that differs substantially from its predecessor. It is clear to the president’s political allies and detractors alike that he approaches foreign policy not in terms of asserting America’s unparalleled might, but of seeking common cause on shared global challenges. In our age of security interdependence, the White House realizes that cooperation with pivotal powers like China is vital to resist threats – terrorism, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, economic crises, global warming – that can harm Americans where they live. In other words, the extent to which China helps solve global problems has very tangible consequences for ordinary Americans, affecting the frequency and severity of hurricanes they experience, the quality of their jobs, or the degree of protection they enjoy against avian flu and rogue nuclear states such as North Korea. Washington and Beijing have framed US–China relations as a positive, constructive and comprehensive relationship that provides a basis for partnership and shared responsibility on the key global issues of our time.
For this approach to truly contribute toward international peace and prosperity, however, China has to become more active in forging collective responses to global challenges, and the United States has to accept China’s greater influence over those responses. The stakes are high; if

Beijing and Washington fail to cooperate, progress will falter and the consequences could be disastrous.

A. Obama will lose in 2012 now—trailing in battleground states, weak economy, bad approval rating, horrible right track/wrong track numbers, losing independent vote Murno 10/28/11 (Neil, Daily Caller, "Experts begin to doubt Obama's re-electability," http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/28/experts-begin-todoubt-obamas-re-electability/?print=1) Barack Obama

Obama Bad Elections DA—1nc Shell

polls below 50 percent in every state that matters. The economy has stalled, unemployment is president’s approval ratings have tanked, and the right-track/wrong-track number fell of the cliff in the summer. Obama has reached the stage of political doom when voters’ disappointment is so deep that they just don’t want to listen to him, talk about him or watch him, said
much higher than the official number of 9 percent, and Hispanics and African Americans are disappointed. The David Hill, a veteran GOP strategist and pollster, in an interview with The Daily Caller. “Nobody says it to their loved ones … [and] they don’t want to do anything about it,” said Hill, who has worked for conservative and liberal Republicans on the East Coast, the West Coast and in the Midwest, since 1984. A tipping point might have been reached in August, when the monthly jobs report showed zero new jobs, Republican pollster Glenn Bolger told TheDC. “With [George W.] Bush, it happened sometime in 2006, after Katrina and the 2005 Iraq situation,” said Bolger, who heads the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. Even Obama-friendly experts are close to dismissing him. Gallup numbers show the president’s

approval at 41 percent, and show him trailing an unnamed “generic Republican” by eight percentage points,
National Journal’s Charlie Cook wrote on Oct. 28. “These numbers certainly don’t show Obama’s reelection fortunes as hopeless, but they paint a very challenging situation.” “Nobody’s gotten elected with these kinds of numbers,” James Carville, the Democratic Party’s snapping turtle, told a radio interviewer Oct. 25. “Everything worries me … I profoundly admit that,” he said on Scott Hennen’s show. Even Bill Daley, the president’s chief of staff, is hoping for a secular miracle. “I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that we have a stronger attitude around the economy … just the beginning of a psychological change,” he told Politico on Oct. 28. “That is the biggest thing. What are the factors that [will create] that? Who knows?…. you can just feel this electorate is very volatile.” Even if there is a turnaround, Hill told TheDC, “there has been such a long and steady and consistent loss of affection for him it would be very difficult to give him credit … I don’t think they’ll be listening.” Back in 1992, the stalled economy roared into life in the last quarter before President George H.W. Bush faced the electorate. But voters didn’t notice the 5.6 percent growth until President Bill Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993. It is true that Obama is running above Jimmy Carter’s approval numbers, that the GOP candidates haven’t excited swingvoters and that a wealthy RINO Republican liberal — perhaps a certain former Utah governor — might yet run as a GOP-splitting independent candidate. But Obama’s right-track/wrong-track numbers are horrible. Only 16 percent of Americans believe the country is

on the right track, down from 32 percent last October, according to Rasmussen Reports. Whatever percent of swing-voting independents continue to believe the country is on the wrong track will pull the the GOP lever in November 2012. The same plummet of optimism is splashed throughout state polls. An August poll of 600 Michigan voters conducted by the
Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, reported that only 14 percent think the country is on the right track, down from 25 percent the in firm’s July sample. The public is even more pessimistic than during Carter’s final dive. In November 1979, just 19 percent of Americans said they were satisfied “with the way things are going in the country.” Today, that score is 11 percent. “No president gets re-elected when 70 or 65 percent say

the nation’s heading in the wrong direction — it just doesn’t happen,” Hill explained. B. Status quo economy means Obama loses—growth by next year ensures Obama re-election Wingfield 11/3/11 (Kyel, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Why Obama's re-election chances of re-election are..." http://blogs.ajc.com/kylewingfield/2011/11/03/why-obamas-chances-of-re-election-are/) Ray Fair of Yale University has updated his forecasting model as follows (G, P and Z are related to growth of gross domestic product; VP is the incumbent president’s predicted share of the vote; VC is his party’s predicted share of the House of Representatives vote nationwide — that’s votes, not seats): Predictions: The current and past predictions of VP and VC using the economic forecasts from the US model are: Date G P Z VP VC November 11, 2010 3.69 1.42 6 55.9 49.9 January 29, 2011 1.93 1.77 4 52.5 48.0 April 28, 2011 2.69 2.01 4 52.8 48.2 July 31, 2011 3.64 2.06 4 53.4 48.5 October 30, 2011 2.75 1.88 1 50.0 46.6 - October 30, 2011, comment: The October 30, 2011, forecast from the US model is somewhat less optimistic about future output growth than was the July 31, 2011, forecast. G is now 2.75 rather than 3.64, and Z is now 1 rather than 4. (The one good news quarter is 2012:3.) P is slightly lower at 1.88 versus 2.06 before. The new economic values lead to a predicted value of VP of 50.0, down from 53.4 in July. The predicted value of VC has fallen from 48.5 to 46.6. The message from the presidential vote equation does not, of course, change. For a moderately growing economy, which the US model is now forecasting, the

election is prediced to be close. If the economy does considerably better, which the US model is predicted to win, although the election is still fairly close. If the economy goes into another recession, Obama is predicted to lose. (H/t: Jim Pethokoukis, who notes that Fair’s model shows Obama getting just 48 percent of the vote using the estimates from JP Morgan. And apologies if the formatting of the table doesn’t show up correctly on your browser.) Fair’s last three sentences pretty much sum it up: The election could go either way if the economy is just OK; it’s Obama’s to lose in the unlikely event that the economy is roaring by next year; it’s the GOP’s to lose in the also unlikely event that growth plunges. But note that Obama’s chances have fallen by 6 percentage points since last Nov. 11, just after Democrats were routed in the midterm elections. Nate Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog at the New York Times also has a forecasting model based on
was forecasting earlier, Obama the economy, Obama’s approval ratings and how ideological the GOP candidate is. (The last factor is not only wholly subjective but, I think, a bit flawed: Won’t voters’ opinion of how ideological the Republican nominee is, and how much that matters, depend in large part on how ideological they consider Obama to be?) And after an interesting discussion of each factor and a series of scenarios based on which GOP candidate is the nominee and what the economy’s doing, Silver concludes: Average these four scenarios together and the probabilities come out to almost exactly 50-50. A month or two ago, when Perry and Romney appeared about equally likely to be the Republican nominee, it would therefore have been proper to think of the election as a toss-up. With Perry having slumped in the polls, however, and Romney the more likely nominee, the odds tilt

slightly toward Obama joining the list of one-termers. It is early, and almost no matter what, the election will be a losable
one for Republicans. But Obama’s position is tenuous enough that it might not be a winnable one for him.

C. Obama re-election means he pressures Israel to accept the creation of a Palestinian state Matzav 6/22/11 (Israel, Blog on Israeli Politics and Security Policy, "January 20, 2013?" http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/06/january-202013.html) Elliott Abrams reports on an open letter to President Obama issued by a number of former American policymakers (Hat Tip: Gershon D). The letter's signers include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, Frank Carlucci, Thomas Pickering, Sandra Day O’Connor, and James Wolfensohn, among others, and was apparently initiated by former Republican Congressman Lee Hamilton (Indiana), who is signed on the cover letter that accompanied it. The letter blames Israel entirely for the current impasse in 'negotiations,' and calls for imposing a

'settlement' on Israel. It sets out the following six points (I have left Elliott's commentary in): (1) “The United States will oppose any
effort to challenge or undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel within internationally recognized borders,” which suggests that we will not oppose undermining Israel today or tomorrow, when it has no such borders. (2) “The United States will work for the establishment of a

sovereign and viable Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, subject only to agreed, minor and equal land swaps to take into account
areas adjoining the former Green Line heavily populated by Israelis .  .  .” President Obama’s suggestion of using the 1967 lines as a base was not enough, and the United States should further undermine Israel’s negotiating position by demanding that any swaps be “minor” and that any settlement not right on the Green Line, such as Ariel (population 18,000), be abandoned. (3) Any solution to the refugee problem cannot flood Israel with Arabs and destroy its character as a Jewish state, so that “proposals for unlimited entry of Palestinian refugees into the State of Israel will be opposed by the United States.” But this formulation of course suggests that proposals for “limited entry” would not be opposed, meaning that an Israeli policy of refusing any such entry is likely to be viewed as obstructionist—yet another Israeli obstacle to peace. (4) As part of a peace agreement, “the United States will support the presence of a U.S.-led multinational force to oversee security provisions and border crossings.” It is a surprise to see this proposal for yet another overseas military commitment at a time when there is so much pressure for withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and Iraq and cuts in the defense budget. And given the nature of the terrorist threat to Israel, how an effective multinational force could be organized is mysterious. In an analogous situation, the international force in Lebanon has failed completely to restrain or disarm Hezbollah. (5) Jerusalem will be divided between Israel and Palestine and “each side” will control its own holy places. Among many other problems, what this means for the Christian holy places and the entire Armenian Quarter is not specified. (6) “The United States will encourage the reconciliation of Fatah and Hamas on terms compatible with these principles and UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.” So there is no precise call for Hamas to adhere to the Quartet Principles, requiring it to abandon terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and adhere to previous agreements. Instead, the United States will move from treating Hamas as a terrorist group, which it is a crime to support, to “encouraging” Fatah to reconcile with it. Read the whole thing. Here's where I break with Elliott. Elliott is dismissive of the possibility that President Obama could ever adopt this letter as policy. These proposals would cause the president political damage, not political risk. Further damage would be caused were he ever to adopt not only these positions but in addition the threatening attitude that is proposed. In his cover letter, Lee Hamilton explains: Prospects for the implementation of these principles depend entirely on an understanding by both parties that there are consequences for their rejection. .  .  . In his speech, President Obama omitted reference to consequences. We believe the cost-benefit calculations of neither party will be changed without that understanding. So these are not to be American proposals, but an American ultimatum to Israel. It is striking that the toughest language, about “consequences” and changing Israel’s “cost-benefit calculations,” is found not in the letter to the president but only in the introductory description from Lee Hamilton. Whether all of the signers agree with this approach cannot be certain, but it must be assumed that all of this was hashed out in advance. The analysis and the proposals made in this letter reveal that many of

America’s most experienced former senior officials now blame Israel alone for the freeze in Middle East peace negotiations. And they believe that Israel should be forced into compromises and sacrifices under enormous American pressure, even if the vast majority of Israelis oppose them and view them as dangerous. This is, to use State Department terminology,
“deeply disturbing,” even if the likelihood that any president would accept this advice is small. But is the likelihood that the President might accept this advice really small? If God forbid Obama is re-elected, come January 20, 2013, he would have four years in

office during which no real political damage could be done to him. He would never have to stand for re-election again. Sure, the Democrats could be punished at the polls in a 2014 midterm election, but we've already seen that in 2010, and it didn't seem to bother Obama too much. Could Obama adopt this strategy of imposing a settlement in 2013? You bet he could - and I'd bet he would. D. Pressuring Israel to accept the peace process creates a Palestinian state—this will destroy Israel and encourage Arab-led WMD attacks Beres 12/15/04 (Louis Rene, Prof of Poly Sci @ Purdue, "Avoiding The `Road Map` After Arafat," http://www.milnet.com/beres/afterarafat.html) Arafat is gone, but the "Road Map" remains. Indeed, regarding Israel`s continuance in the Middle East, absolutely nothing has changed in the Palestinian Authority or in the Arab world generally. Notwithstanding President Bush`s explicit plea for a "Two State Solution," the PA and

its allies still see only one state. This State of Palestine would include all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and ALL of the rest of Israel. So why should Israel follow the Road Map, a route leading directly to its own extinction? Cartographically, Israel is already the
victim of an Arab genocide. Why, then, should the leaders and people of Israel now permit the Arabs to proceed from maps to flesh and blood annihilation? Irony still surrounds the Road Map to peace in the Middle East. Should this deadly plan create the impression

that it can put a halt to Palestinian terrorism — perhaps by carefully coordinated Arab orchestration of a temporary halt to terror violence — Israel would then be under increasing pressure to accept a Palestinian state. This is especially the case if Prime Minister Sharon should proceed simultaneously with his declared policy of "disengagement" from Gaza. To be sure, once codified, the new enemy state of Palestine would move as soon as practicable to implement final stages of the never-withdrawn 1974 PLO "Phased Plan" for Israel`s dismemberment. For Israel, the Road Map is a "lose-lose" proposition. If the post-Arafat
Palestinian Authority cannot prevent further acts of anti-Israel terror (or remains itself actively committed to such acts), the Jewish state will still suffer inhumane attacks upon its civilians. If, however, the post-Arafat PA can and will reign in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and several

militant Fatah factions — that is, if it can be "successful" — a permanent Palestinian terror state will almost certainly be established in Judea, Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza. This state of "Palestine" will create several

new levels of security nightmare for Israel, including a mobilizing point of hostility for "Israeli Arabs" and a launching point for future WMD aggressions against Jewish populations. E. This Arab-Israeli war outweighs—probability and magnitude Chomsky 99 (Noam, Political Commentator + Prof of Linguistics @ MIT, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, p. 449)
The disasters threatening the Palestinians and Israel are evident enough. It also does not take a great deal of thought to perceive the risks to the United States, and in fact the entire world, from the unresolved Israel-Arab conflict. The world contains many trouble spots, but none

pose such dangers of superpower confrontation as the Middle East, and of the many conflicts in this region, none approaches the Israel-Arab conflict--and at its heart, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians--in the threat it poses of global, nuclear war. In comparison, the threat of a superpower confrontation in Europe, or elsewhere, seems
slight. Sheer self-interest alone, apart from anything else, should make it a priority item for Americans--of for anyone interested in survival--to seek a resolution of this conflict. The question is a particularly urgent one for Americans to address in light of the role of U.S. rejectionism in perpetuating the conflict and undermining the possibility for political settlement.

Launches DA – 1NC
A. Uniqueness – Space Debris is reaching a critical mass now Doctorow 11 – Former European EFF Coordinator
Cory, former European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 5-2011, “Space debris to go critical, reduce all satellites to junk?,” http://boingboing.net/2011/05/11/space-debris-to-go-c.html

The amount of debris in the orbits used by our communications and weather satellites is building toward critical mass, a point of no return in which debris starts to smash into active satellites, turning them into more debris that smashes more sats, and so on. There's no cost-effective solution to the space-junk problem and none are on the horizon. Marshall Kaplan (Johns Hopkins
Space Department) believes that it's inevitable that all the satellites in use will be percussively decommissioned and their orbits will be unusable. He speculates that we'll replace them with lower orbit satellite constellations that relay to one another in order to achieve the coverage attained by today's high-orbit sats. Here's Gen. William Shelton, commander of USAF Space Command: "The traffic is increasing. We've now got over 50 nations that are participants in the space environment," Shelton said last month during the Space Foundation's 27th National Space Symposium. Given existing space situational awareness capabilities, over 20,000 objects are now tracked.

B. Launches leave behind debris creating damage to other space assets Australian Space Academy 7
“Briefing on Space Law,” ASA, http://www.spaceacademy.net.au/spacelaw/spacelaw.htm
Since the start of the space age the problem of unwanted material or debris in space has been growing. Each

space launch usually leaves considerably more than the desired satellite in orbit. Expended rocket boosters, attachment bolts, shields, solid rocket motor slag, and innumerable other items are placed into Earth orbit. Some of these decay (lose altitude) and burn up in
the atmosphere - some are large enough to escape complete destruction by ablation and then may pose a potential hazard to life and property on the Earth's surface. In space, materials degrade and detach from satellites; stored energy in the form of unspent fuel and battery vapours may cause explosive rupture and fragmentation of space objects. Collisions

between space objects at hypervelocity not only causes damage, but also creates thousands of other space objects (ie fragments of the original objects) which themselves then pose collision hazards to active spacecraft. C. Increased debris collapses every major economic sector Ansdell 10 – PhD Candidate @ GWU

Megan Ansdell, Graduate Student @ GWU, 2010, “Active Space Debris Removal,” Princeton Publications, http://www.princeton.edu/jpia/past-issues-1/2010/Space-Debris-Removal.pdf

Although the probability of catastrophic collisions caused by space debris has increased over the years, it remains relatively low and there have been only four known collisions between objects larger than ten centimeters (Wright 2009, 6). Nevertheless, the real concern is the predicted runaway growth of space debris over the coming decades. Such uncontrolled growth would prohibit the ability of satellites to provide their services, many of which are now widely used by the global community. Indeed, in a testimony to Congress for a hearing on “Keeping the Space Environment Safe for Civil and Commercial Uses,” the Director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, Dr. Scott Pace, stated that, …space systems such as satellite communications, environmental monitoring, and global navigation satellite systems are crucial to the productivity of many types of national and international infrastructures such as air, sea, and highway transportation, oil and gas pipelines, financial networks, and global communications (Pace 2009).

Launches DA – 1NC
Economic collapse risks nuclear war Harris and Burrows 9 PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council
(NIC) & member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit
Mathew and Jennifer “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf Increased Potential for Global Conflict Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include

Great Depression the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and

multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed
the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist

groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control
processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that

become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable
Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could

deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran.

lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important
opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With

geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create

water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.

___**Ice Age

Ice Age – 1NC
Ice Age inevitable by 2027, causes extinction – warming NOW key to prevent it
Chapman, ‘8 geophysicist and astronautical engineer (Paul Chapman, The Australian, 23 April 2008 “Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age
cometh,” https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/130e7779ea646795) That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure causal connection but it is

of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a cause for concern. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850. There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases. There
is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet. The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North

America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm

interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years. The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and

it can happen in 20 years. The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027. By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining. Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time. If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale. For example: We

could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun. We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits. We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming

decades. Ice Age extinction imminent by 2022 – warming key to delay, and adaption solves your impacts Marsh, 08 physicist from the Argonne National Laboratory and a former consultant to the Department of Defense on strategic nuclear technology
and policy in the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton Administration (Gerald Marsh, WinningGreen, 2008, “The Coming of a New Ice Age,” http://www.winningreen.com/site/epage/59549_621.htm) Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the day, the real danger facing humanity is not global warming, but more likely the coming of a

new Ice Age. What we live in now is known as an interglacial, a relatively brief period between long ice ages. Unfortunately for us, most interglacial periods last only about ten thousand years, and that is how long it has been since the last Ice Age ended. How much longer do we have before the ice begins to spread across the Earth’s surface? Less than a hundred years or several hundred? We simply don’t know. Even if all the temperature increase over the last century is attributable to human activities, the rise has been relatively modest one of a little over one degree Fahrenheit — an increase well within natural variations over the last few thousand years. While an enduring temperature rise of the same size over the next century would cause humanity to make some changes, it would undoubtedly be within our ability to adapt. Entering a new ice age, however, would be catastrophic for the continuation of modern civilization. One has only to look at maps showing the extent of the great ice sheets during the last Ice Age to understand what a return to ice age conditions would mean. Much of Europe and North-America were covered by thick ice, thousands of feet thick in many areas and the world as a whole was much colder. The last “little” Ice Age started as early as the 14th century when the Baltic Sea froze over followed by unseasonable cold, storms, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea. That was followed by the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland and the loss of grain cultivation in
Iceland. Harvests were even severely reduced in Scandinavia And this was a mere foreshadowing of the miseries to come. By the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, wiping out farms and entire villages. In England, the River Thames froze during the winter, and in 1780, New York Harbor froze. Had this continued, history would have been very different. Luckily, the decrease in solar activity that caused the Little Ice Age ended and the result was the continued flowering of modern civilization. There were very few Ice Ages until about 2.75 million years ago when Earth’s climate entered an unusual period of instability. Starting about a million years ago cycles of ice ages lasting about 100,000 years, separated by relatively short interglacial perioods, like the one we are now living in became the rule. Before the onset of the Ice Ages, and for most of the Earth’s history, it was far warmer than it is today. Indeed, the Sun has been getting brighter over the whole history of the Earth and large land plants

have flourished. Both of these had the effect of dropping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to the lowest level in Earth’s long history. Five hundred million years ago, carbon dioxide concentrations were

over 13 times current levels; and not until about 20 million years ago did carbon dioxide levels dropped to a little less than twice what they are today. It is possible that moderately increased carbon dioxide concentrations could extend the current interglacial period. But we

have not reached the level required yet, nor do we know the optimum level to reach. So, rather than call for arbitrary limits on carbon dioxide emissions, perhaps the best thing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and

the climatology community in general could do is spend their efforts on determining the optimal range of carbon dioxide needed to extend the current interglacial period indefinitely. NASA has predicted that the solar cycle peaking in 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries and should cause a very significant cooling of Earth’s climate. Will this be the trigger that initiates a new Ice Age? We ought to carefully consider this possibility before we wipe out our current prosperity by spending trillions of dollars to combat a perceived global warming threat that may well
prove to be only a will-o-the-wisp.

Resources/Biodiversity
Global warming good – resources and biodiversity Robbins, ’06 award winning Senior Editorial Writer for Foreign Affairs at the Washington Times, an author, political commentator and professor,
with an expertise in security, and foreign and military affairs. He served as special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and is Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs on the American Foreign Policy Council (James S. Robbins, National Review Online, 8 August 2006, “Hooray for Global Warming,” http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/218408/hooray-global-warming/james-s-robbins) Personally, I don’t know what all the shouting is about. Global warming is great. Granted, maybe it isn’t really happening, and if it is there are strong reasons to doubt that humans have anything to do with it. But if the world is warming, I say “bravo.” People in most parts of the globe should have no objection to a warmer, wetter climate. If the aliens were watching they’d conclude we were making our planet more habitable on

purpose. Consider the large landmasses in the northern hemisphere, say north of 55 degrees. These are very extreme climates for human habitation. A population distribution map of Canada shows most people live in a belt running along the southern border with the United States. But add global warming and vast regions would become comfortably habitable. As well, there would be more land available for cultivation. Resources would be easier to extract. True, there might be some dislocations
as crops shifted northward, but so what? Economies change all the time. And imagine the land boom up the coastlines as people rushed on up for beachfront property. If global warming is real it is creating the investment opportunity of a lifetime. Of course, you have to factor in ice-cap melt and the possibility that today’s shoreline might move inland. The Al Gore scare film has some dramatic footage of the consequences of a 20foot rise in sea levels. Most estimates I have read about talk about a three-foot rise at most, but let’s not quibble. In the movie, oceans are seen rushing inland, implying some kind of inundation episode. But the waters will not rise so quickly, if they do at all. And if this threatens

our cities one would think some form of sea wall would be in order. The Dutch have been doing this for years, there is no reason why we can’t copy them. And in response to Gore’s grotesque pandering — saying that if sea levels rose high enough
the Ground Zero site in New York would be under water — I say no, sir, we cannot, we will not let this happen! A wall I say! We will protect that sacred ground at all costs! No patriotic American, no real American, would settle for less! Anyway, get with it Democrats, where is your traditional love of public works? Rising ocean levels will keep the government in the sea wall business for decades. In any case there is no

compelling evidence that the seas are rising. The catastrophists warn that small islands and atolls will be the first to go, and the island
state of Tuvalu in the Pacific has made a habit of demanding western aid as compensation for this imminent threat to their very existence. It plays well with the liberal guilt complex. But sea-level data from Tuvalu show basically a flat-line average since 1977 — talk about

an inconvenient truth! Think of the other advantages the Left is ignoring. A warmer wetter world could very well mean more rain forests — hence more biodiversity! We are supposed to value that for some reason, right? And if the ice caps melt and we get more ocean, well that just means more habitat for whales doesn’t it? And warmer climates might reverse the migration pattern in this country away from the frigid liberal northeast towards the warm conservative south. Imagine Massachusetts and Vermont gaining seats in Congress and then tell me how bad global warming is. Every loss of biodiversity risks human extinction.. Diner 1994 (David, Ph.D., Planetary Science and Geology, "The Army and the Endangered Species Act: Who's Endangering Whom?", Military Law Review, 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161, Lexis) To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew 74 could save [hu]mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to[hu]man[s] in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their extirpations could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a species affects other species dependent on it. 75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. 4. Biological Diversity. -- The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. 77 As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. 78 [*173] Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." 79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster.

Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 [hu]mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.

weather mod—fails
Weather mod requires modeling Hoffman, 04 – principal scientist and vice president for research and development at Atmospheric and Environmental Research (Ross, “Controlling Hurricanes,” Scientific American, October, 04, ebsco) To even consider controlling hurricanes, researchers will need to be able to predict a storm’s course extremely accurate- ly, to identify the physical changes (such as alterations in air tem- perature) that would influence its behavior, and to find ways to effect those changes. This work is in its infancy, but successful computer simulations of hurricanes carried out during the past few years suggest that modification could one day be feasible. What is more, it turns out the very thing that makes forecasting any weather difficult—the atmosphere’s extreme sensitivity to small stimuli—may well be the key to achieving the control we seek. Our first attempt at influencing the course of a simulated hurricane by making minor changes to the storm’s initial state, for example, proved remarkably successful, and the subsequent results have continued to look favorable, too. That fails Hoffman, 04 – principal scientist and vice president for research and development at Atmospheric and Environmental Research (Ross, “Controlling Hurricanes,” Scientific American, October, 04, ebsco) Unfortunately, meteorological fore-casts are imperfect. In the first place, the beginning model state is always incom-plete and inexact. Initial states for hurri-canes are particularly difficult to define because direct observations are few and difficult to make. Yet we do know from satellite cloud images that hurricanes have complex and detailed structures. Al- though these cloud images are potential- ly useful, we need to know much more. Second, even with a perfect initial state, computer models of severe tropical storms are themselves prone to error. The atmosphere, for example, is modeled only at a grid of points. Features smaller than the grid length, the distance between two neighboring grid points, cannot be handled correctly. Without very high res-olution, a hurricane’s structure near the eye wall—its most important feature—is smoothed out and the details are unclear. In addition, the models, just like the atmosphere they simulate, behave in a chaotic fashion, and inaccuracies from both these error sources grow rapidly as the forecast computations proceed.

The tech isn’t even ready for a demonstration project – means the aff solves nothing URSI, 7 – international union of radio science
[June, “URSI White Paper on Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Systems and Report of the URSI Inter-Commission Working Group on SPS”, http://www.ursi.org/files/WhitePapers/WPSPS-ReportMin.pdf, AL] It should be stressed that an

1NC

SPS is not imminent. Many changes in technology can be expected before an SPS is launched. Major technological problems still have to be solved, even before a demonstration project could be realised. On the other hand, the radioscience aspects of an SPS encompass many interesting scientific, engineering, and technological
challenges. To identify, to describe, and to discuss these items is the main aim of this white paper

GEO orbit fails Royce Jones, ’10, Space Technology entrepreneur, venture manager, IP developer and investor Winter 2010, (Online Journal of Space Communication, Issue No. 16: Solar Power Satellites, Alternative Orbits A New Space Solar Power Reference Design, http://spacejournal.ohio.edu/issue16/jones.html)
The Problem Most

solar power system placement proposals are intended for geosynchronous orbit. This is one reason the GEO solar power satellite (SPS) systems end up having an initial start up cost of tens of billions of dollars. The
largest single cost of GEO solar power satellites is the cost of launching the components into orbit. The second largest cost is moving the components from low Earth orbit (LEO) to geostationary (GEO). The problem with GEO SPS is the 36,000 kilometer distance. This distance from Earth

requires large microwave transmitters and large ground receivers. The great distance also results in very high launch costs due
to the transmitter size and mass and the very real prospect of interference with the large number of communication satellites located there. As noted in Figure 4, the reason that the solar power satellite must be so large at GEO has to do with the physics of power

beaming. The smaller the transmitter array, the larger is the angle of divergence of the transmitted beam. A highly divergent beam will spread out over a wide land area, and may be too weak to activate the rectenna. In order to obtain a sufficiently concentrated beam, more power must be collected and fed into a large transmitter array. Power beaming from geostationary orbit by microwaves has the added difficulty that the required “optical aperture” sizes must be very large. The 1978 NASA
SPS study required a 1km diameter transmitting antenna, and a 10 km diameter receiving rectenna, for a microwave beam at 2.45 GHz frequencies.

USFG fails—prevents private sector spill over Nansen 9 led the Boeing team of engineers in the Satellite Power System Concept Development and Evaluation Program for the Department of
Energy and NASA, and President Solar Space Industries (Ralph, Energy Crisis: Solution from Space, P.151, FS) Another approach follows a much more conventional path. It is the development of a new fully reusable rocket powered space transportation system. This idea harks back to NASA's original goal for the space shuttle. The difference now is we understand the problem much better today, and the technology has improved significantly. The keys to making a space transportation system low-cost are typical of economical transportation systems. First of all they have to be fully reusable. An airline wouldn’t be in business very long if they bought a new airliner to fly passengers from New York to Hong Kong, threw it away and bought another new one to make the trip back. But that is exactly what is happening with space transportation today. Another important feature is to have a reasonable sized payload so that the cost is spread over many uses. This allows its capital cost to be amortized over many trips. The cost of maintenance and operations must also be low. Last but not least the cost or fuel must be minimized. The reason these factors have not already been done for space transportation is that there has not been a sufficiently large market to justify the extra development costs involved. The transportation market to launch solar power satellites certainly is big enough for this to happen. In addition the system needs to be

designed and developed by a commercial company that understand all of the costs that must be controlled for it to be a successful commercial venture, if it is done by a government bureaucracy like NASA it probably won’t succeed. We have the Space Shuttle as an example of how far off base a commercially viable system NASA has strayed. International cooperation key to solve SSP—own author proves

Hsu ‘07
(Feng,- Senior Aerospace Engineer for NASA and a former research fellow of Nuclear Energy Dept. at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and leading NASA expert on risk management “Harnessing the SUN – Embarking On Humanity’s Next Giant Leap,” Interview conducted by David Houle, http://www.scientificblogging.com/david_houle/harnessing_the_sun_embarking_on_humanity_s_next_giant_leap) Yes,

a “Manhattan Project” like major effort led by the US with participations from broad international community is what needed to a successful creation, implementation and operations of a commercial scale SSP system. Please remember, an inherent feature of solar power satellites is their location in earth orbit outside the borders of any individual nation with their energy delivered back to the earth by way of certain form of WPT (wireless power transmission).
The applications of WPT must be compatible with other uses of the radio frequency spectrum in the affected orbital space. The SPS infrastructure must also be launched and delivered into space. Therefore, it is vital for international and government involvement to coordinate

global treaties and agreements, such as covering frequency assignments, satellite locations, space traffic control and many other features of space operations that are mandatory in order to prevent international confrontations. I believe it is imperative for a multi-governmental organization or entity be put in place first for a major SSP project, and it will be extremely difficult, if not inconceivable, for the US or any single nation to do

this alone at any useful or significant power scale due to the many political and technological reasons as stated.
However, it is equally important that there must be a leading nation to provide the necessary leadership in such complex and interdependent international SSP effort. In a partnership of multiple governments and industries, it is vital that the leadership

and

responsibilities of the various project elements be clearly defined in order to prevent chaos. There should be some
logical parameters to outline how this can be done. The key step is to establish a lead nation. The United States is the logical leader in this area because of the breadth of technology infrastructure and capability that already exists, as well as the magnitude of financial resources available in its industry and financial community.In any case, space solar power is going to be a gigantic yet achievable human technology and engineering endeavor, based on heritages of human ingenuity. We can go to the Moon; we can achieve splitting atoms; we can also overcome the inefficacy problems of the solar-electric conversion, and we can achieve the goal for affordable access to space and hence making the SSP a cost competitive energy production for all of humanity. Key SSP component technologies will also enable human economic expansion and settlement into space, which is utterly important for the permanent survival of our species. To this end, such a “vertical expansion of humanity” into our solar system in the new millennium can be every bit as important (if not far more critical) as the “horizontal expansion” achieved by our ancestors since the 1400s. Indeed, SSP will provide an ideal platform for promoting human collaborations that will help reduce the global economy imbalances. It can be also a major steppingstone for humanity’s next giant leap for harnessing the Sun and transforming the combustion world economy into the solar-electric human civilization that is likely to transpire and elevating our species.

Sponsor Documents

Or use your account on DocShare.tips

Hide

Forgot your password?

Or register your new account on DocShare.tips

Hide

Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link to create a new password.

Back to log-in

Close