Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (1/15)

FIRST WE OFFER THE PLAN: The United States federal government should substantially increase its capability to detect and deflect near earth objects.

NEXT,

INHERENCY

NASA HAS INSUFFICIENT FUNDS TO DISCOVER NEAR EARTH OBJECTS

ASEB 10 (Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, National Research Council, (Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies”, The National Academies Press, 2010, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12842)

Finding: Congress has mandated that NASA discover 90 percent of all near-Earth objects 140 meters in diameter or greater by 2020. The administration has not requested and Congress has not appropriated new funds   to meet this objective . Only limited facilities are currently involved in this survey/discovery effort, funded by NASA’s existing budget.

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Novice 1AC (2/15)AND, ADVANTAGE ONE IS PLANETARY DESTRUCTION

DON’T LISTEN TO THE NEGATIVE – LATEST SCIENCE SHOWS MULTIPLE SPACE OBJECT STRIKES ARE FREQUENT AND UNPREDICTABLE – 1 IN 10 RISK EACH CENTURY

Easterbrook 08 (Gregg, Editor of The Atlantic and The New Republic and Sr. Fellow at Brookings, “The Sky is Falling,” June, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroids)

Breakthrough ideas have a way of seeming obvious in retrospect, and about a decade ago, a Columbia University geophysicist named Dallas Abbott had a breakthrough

idea. She had been pondering the craters left by comets and asteroids that smashed into Earth. Geologists had counted them and concluded that space strikes are rare events and had occurred mainly during the era of primordial mists. But, Abbott realized, this deduction was based on the number of craters found on land—and because 70 percent of Earth’s surface is water, wouldn’t most space objects hit the sea? So she began searching for underwater craters caused by impacts rather than by other forces, such as volcanoes. What she has found is spine-chilling: evidence that several enormous asteroids or comets have slammed into our planet quite recently, in geologic terms. If Abbott is right, then you may be here today, reading this magazine, only because by sheer chance those objects struck the ocean rather than land. Abbott believes that a space object about 300 meters in diameter hit the Gulf of Carpentaria, north of Australia, in 536   A.D. An object that size , striking at up to 50,000 miles per hour, could release as much energy as 1,000 nuclear bombs. Debris, dust, and gases thrown into the atmosphere by the impact would have blocked sunlight, temporarily cooling the planet—and indeed, contemporaneous accounts describe dim skies, cold summers, and poor harvests in 536 and 537. “A most dread portent took place,” the Byzantine historian Procopius wrote of 536; the sun “gave forth its light without brightness.” Frost reportedly covered China in the summertime. Still, the harm was mitigated by the ocean impact. When a space object strikes land, it kicks up more dust and debris, increasing the global-cooling effect; at the same time, the combination of shock waves and extreme heating at the point of impact generates nitric and nitrous acids, producing rain as corrosive as battery acid. If the Gulf of Carpentaria object were to strike Miami today, most of the city would be leveled, and the atmospheric effects could trigger crop failures around the world. What’s more, the Gulf of Carpentaria object was a skipping stone compared with an object that Abbott thinks whammed into the Indian Ocean near Madagascar some 4,800 years ago, or about 2,800 B.C. Researchers generally assume that a space object a kilometer or more across would cause significant global harm: widespread destruction, severe acid rain, and dust storms that would darken the world’s skies for decades. The object that hit the Indian Ocean was three to five kilometers across, Abbott believes, and caused a tsunami in the Pacific 600 feet high—many times higher than the 2004 tsunami that struck Southeast Asia. Ancient texts such as Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh support her conjecture, describing an unspeakable planetary flood in roughly the same time period. If the Indian Ocean object were to hit the sea now, many of the world’s coastal cities could be flattened. If it were to hit land, much of a continent would be leveled; years of winter and mass starvation would ensue. At the start of her research, which has sparked much debate among specialists, Abbott reasoned that if colossal asteroids or comets strike the sea with about the same frequency as they strike land, then given the number of known land craters, perhaps 100 large impact craters might lie beneath the oceans. In less than a decade of searching, she and a few colleagues have already found what appear to be 14 large underwater impact sites. That they’ve found so many so rapidly is hardly reassuring. Other scientists are making equally unsettling discoveries. Only in the past few decades have astronomers begun to search the nearby skies for objects such as asteroids and comets (for convenience, let’s call them “space rocks”). What they are finding suggests that near-Earth space rocks are more numerous than was once thought, and that their orbits may not be as stable as has been assumed. There is also reason to think that space rocks may not even need to reach Earth’s surface to cause cataclysmic damage. Our solar system appears to be a far more dangerous place than was previously believed. The received wisdom about the origins of the solar system goes something like this: the sun and planets formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a swirling nebula containing huge amounts of gas and dust, as well as relatively small amounts of metals and other dense substances released by ancient supernova explosions. The sun is at the center; the denser planets, including Earth, formed in the middle region, along with many asteroids—the small rocky bodies made of material that failed to incorporate into a planet. Farther out are the gas-giant planets, such as Jupiter, plus vast amounts of light elements, which formed comets on the boundary of the solar system. Early on, asteroids existed by the millions; the planets and their satellites were bombarded by constant, furious strikes. The heat and shock waves generated by these impacts regularly sterilized the young Earth. Only after the rain of space objects ceased could life begin; by then, most asteroids had already either hit something or found stable orbits that do not lead toward planets or moons. Asteroids still exist, but most were assumed to be in the asteroid belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter, far from our blue world. As for comets, conventional wisdom held that they

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Novice 1AC (3/15)(CONTINUED…)

also bombarded the planets during the early eons. Comets are mostly frozen water mixed with dirt. An ancient deluge of comets may have helped create our oceans; lots of comets hit the moon, too, but there the light elements they were composed of evaporated. As with asteroids, most comets were thought to have smashed into something long ago; and, because the solar system is largely void, researchers deemed it statistically improbable that those remaining would cross the paths of planets. These standard assumptions—that remaining space rocks are few, and that encounters with planets were mainly confined to the past—are being upended. On March 18, 2004, for instance, a 30-meter asteroid designated 2004 FH—a hunk potentially large enough to obliterate a city—shot past Earth, not far above the orbit occupied by telecommunications satellites. (Enter “2004 FH” in the search box at Wikipedia and you can watch film of that asteroid passing through the night sky.) Looking at the broader picture, in 1992 the astronomers David Jewitt, of the University of Hawaii, and Jane Luu, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discovered the Kuiper Belt, a region of asteroids and comets that starts near the orbit of Neptune and extends for immense distances outward. At least 1,000 objects big enough to be seen from Earth have already been located there. These objects are 100 kilometers across or larger, much bigger than whatever dispatched the dinosaurs; space rocks this size are referred to as “planet killers” because their impact would likely end life on Earth. Investigation of the Kuiper Belt has just begun, but there appear to be substantially more asteroids in this region than in the asteroid belt, which may need a new name. Beyond the Kuiper Belt may lie the hypothesized Oort Cloud, thought to contain as many as trillions of comets. If the Oort Cloud does exist, the number of extant comets is far greater than was once believed. Some astronomers now think that short-period comets, which swing past the sun frequently, hail from the relatively nearby Kuiper Belt, whereas comets whose return periods are longer originate in the Oort Cloud. But if large numbers of comets and asteroids are still around, several billion years after the formation of the solar system, wouldn’t they by now be in stable orbits—ones that rarely intersect those of the planets? Maybe not. During the past few decades, some astronomers have theorized that the movement of the solar system within the Milky Way varies the gravitational stresses to which the sun, and everything that revolves around it, is exposed. The solar system may periodically pass close to stars or groups of stars whose gravitational pull affects the Oort Cloud, shaking comets and asteroids loose from their orbital moorings and sending them downward, toward the inner planets. Consider objects that are already near Earth, and the picture gets even bleaker. Astronomers traditionally spent little time looking for asteroids, regarding them as a lesser class of celestial bodies, lacking the beauty of comets or the significance of planets and stars. Plus, asteroids are hard to spot—they move rapidly, compared with the rest of the heavens, and even the nearby ones are fainter than other objects in space. Not until the 1980s did scientists begin systematically searching for asteroids near Earth. They have been finding them in disconcerting abundance. In 1980, only 86 near-Earth asteroids and comets were known to exist. By 1990, the figure had risen to 170; by 2000, it was 921; as of this writing, it is 5,388. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, part of NASA, keeps a running tally at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats. Ten years ago, 244 near-Earth space rocks one kilometer across or more—the size that would cause global calamity—were known to exist; now 741 are. Of the recently discovered nearby space objects, NASA has classified 186 as “impact risks” (details about these rocks are at www.neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk). And because most space-rock searches to date have been low-budget affairs, conducted with equipment designed to look deep into the heavens, not at nearby space, the actual number of impact risks is undoubtedly much higher. Extrapolating from recent discoveries, NASA   estimates that there are perhaps 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets in the general vicinity of Earth. There’s still more bad news. Earth has experienced several mass extinctions—the dinosaurs died about 65 million years ago, and something killed off some 96 percent of the world’s marine species about 250 million years ago. Scientists have generally assumed that whatever caused those long-ago mass extinctions—comet impacts, extreme volcanic activity—arose from conditions that have changed and no longer pose much threat. It’s a comforting notion—but what about the mass extinction that occurred close to our era? About 12,000 years ago, many large animals of North America started disappearing—woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, mastodons, and others. Some scientists have speculated that Paleo-Indians may have hunted some of the creatures to extinction. A millennia-long mini–Ice Age also may have been a factor. But if that’s the case, what explains the disappearance of the Clovis People, the best-documented Paleo-Indian culture, at about the same time? Their population stretched as far south as Mexico, so the mini–Ice Age probably was not solely responsible for their extinction. A team of researchers led by Richard Firestone, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, recently announced the discovery of evidence that one or two huge space rocks, each perhaps several kilometers across, exploded high above Canada 12,900 years ago. The detonation, they believe, caused widespread fires and dust clouds, and disrupted climate patterns so severely that it triggered a prolonged period of global cooling. Mammoths and other species might have been killed either by the impact itself or by starvation after their food supply was disrupted. These conclusions, though hotly disputed by other researchers, were based on extensive examinations of soil samples from across the continent; in strata from that era, scientists found widely distributed soot and also magnetic grains of iridium, an element that is rare on Earth but common in space. Iridium is the meteor-hunter’s lodestar: the discovery of iridium dating back 65 million years is what started the geologist Walter Alvarez on his path-breaking theory about the dinosaurs’ demise. A more recent event gives further cause for concern. As buffs of the television show The X Files will recall, just a century ago, in 1908, a huge explosion occurred above Tunguska, Siberia. The cause was not a malfunctioning alien star-cruiser but a small asteroid or comet that detonated as it approached the ground. The blast had hundreds of times the force of the Hiroshima bomb and devastated an area of several hundred square miles. Had the explosion occurred above London or Paris, the city would no longer exist. Mark Boslough, a researcher at the Sandia National Laboratory, in New Mexico, recently concluded that the Tunguska object was surprisingly small, perhaps only 30 meters across. Right now, astronomers are nervously tracking 99942 Apophis, an asteroid with a slight chance of striking Earth in April 2036. Apophis is also small by asteroid standards, perhaps 300 meters across, but it could hit with about 60,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb—enough to destroy an area the size of France. In other words, small asteroids may be more dangerous than we used to think—and may do considerable damage even if they don’t reach Earth’s surface. Until recently, nearly all the thinking about the risks of space-rock strikes has focused on counting craters. But what if most impacts don’t leave craters? This is the prospect that troubles Boslough. Exploding in the air, the Tunguska rock did plenty of damage, but if people had not seen the flashes, heard the detonation, and traveled to the remote area to photograph the scorched, flattened wasteland, we’d never know the Tunguska event had happened. Perhaps a comet or two exploding above Canada 12,900 years ago spelled the end for saber-toothed cats and Clovis society. But no obvious crater resulted; clues to the calamity were subtle and hard to

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come by. Comets, asteroids, and the little meteors that form pleasant shooting stars approach Earth at great speeds—at least 25,000 miles per hour. As they enter the atmosphere they heat up, from friction, and compress, because they decelerate rapidly. Many space rocks explode under this stress, especially small ones; large objects are more likely to reach Earth’s surface. The angle at which objects enter the atmosphere also matters: an asteroid or comet approaching straight down has a better chance of hitting the surface than one entering the atmosphere at a shallow angle, as the latter would have to plow through more air, heating up and compressing as it descended. The object or objects that may have detonated above Canada 12,900 years ago would probably have approached at a shallow angle. If, as Boslough thinks, most asteroids and comets explode before reaching the ground, then this is another reason to fear that the conventional thinking seriously underestimates the frequency of space-rock strikes—the small number of craters may be lulling us into complacency. After all, if a space rock were hurtling toward a city, whether it would leave a crater would not be the issue—the explosion would be the issue. A generation ago, the standard assumption was that a dangerous object would strike Earth perhaps once

in a million years. By the mid-1990s, researchers began to say that the threat was greater: perhaps a strike every 300,000 years. This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist at The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air Force, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike. Regardless of which estimate is correct, the likelihood of an event is, of course, no predictor. Even if space strikes are   likely   only once every million years, that doesn’t mean a million years will pass before the next impact—the sky could suddenly darken tomorrow. Equally important, improbable but cataclysmic dangers ought to command attention because of their scope. A tornado is far more likely than an asteroid strike, but humanity is sure to survive the former. The chances that any one person will die in an airline crash are minute, but this does not prevent us from caring about aviation safety. And as Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft, put it, “The odds of a space-object strike during your lifetime may be no more than the odds you will die in a plane crash—but with space rocks, it’s like the entire human race is riding on the plane.”

AND

SMALL OBJECT IMPACTS KILL BILLIONS – STARVATION AND DIRECT BLAST

Johnson 95 (Lindley, NASA’s executive for both the Discovery Program of Solar System exploration missions, and the Near Earth Object Observations Program,“Preparing for Planetary Defense: Detection and Interception of Asteroids on Collision Course with Earth”, A Spacecast 2020 White Paper for the Air War College, 1995, http://csat.au.af.mil/2020/papers/app-r.pdf)

But it doesn't take a "planet buster" of 10 kilometers diameter to wreak global havoc. Scientists estimate that the effect from an impact by an asteroid even as small as 0.5 km could cause climate changes sufficient to dramatically reduce crop yields for one or more years due to killing frosts in the mid-latitudes in the middle of summer. Impacts by objects 1 to 2 km in size could therefore cause a significant increase in the death toll due to mass starvation by a significant portion of the world's population as few countries store as much as even one year's required amount of food. The death toll from direct impact effects, blast and firestorm, as well as the climatic effects could approach 25 percent of the world's human population (figure 5). Even though it may be a rare event, happening only every few hundred thousand years, the average annual fatalities from such an event could still exceed most natural disaster more familiar to us (figure 6).

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Novice 1AC (5/15)AND

LARGE OBJECT IMPACT ENDS ALL LIFE ON EARTH THROUGH DUST, ATMOSPHERIC DEPLETION, ACID RAIN, AND CLIMACTIC SHIFTS

Napier 08 – Astronomer, co-authored 3 books and written over 100 papers, worked for the 25 years at the Royal Observatory, 2 years at Oxford and 9 at the Armagh Observatory, Honorary professor at Cardiff University Oxford University Press (William, “Global Catastrophic Risks”)

Impacts approaching end-times ferocity probably begin at a million or 2 megatons TNT equivalent (Chapman and Morrison, 1994), corresponding to the impact of bodies a kilometre or so across. Blast and earthquake devastation are now at least continental in scale. While direct radiation from the rising fireball, peaking at 100 km altitude, is limited to a range of 1000 km by the curvature of the Earth, ballistic energy would throw hot ash to the top of the atmosphere, whence it would spread globally. Sunlight would be cut off, and food chains would collapse. The settling time of fine dust is measured in years, and commercial agriculture could not be sustained (Engvild. 2003). lacking sunlight, continental temperatures would plummet, and heat would flow from the warmer oceans onto the cooled land masses, resulting in violent, freezing winds blowing from sea to land as long as the imbalance persisted. At these higher energies, an ocean impact yields water waves whose dimensions are comparable with the span of underwater earthquakes, and so the transport of the wave energy over global distances seems more assured, as does the hydraulic bore which could create a deep and catastrophic inundation of land. From 10 million megatons upwards, we may be approaching the mass extinctions of species from a cocktail of prompt and prolonged effects. A land impact of this order could conceivably exterminate humanity and would surely leave signatures in the evolutionary record for future intelligent species to detect. Regionally, the local atmosphere might simply be blown into space. A rain of perhaps 10 million boulders, metre sized and upwards, would be expected over at least continental dimensions if analogy with the Martian impact crater distribution holds (McEwen ct iL, 2005). Major global effects include wildfires through the incinerating effect of dust thrown around the Earth; poisoning of the atmosphere and ocean by dioxins. acid rain, sulphates and heavy metals; global warming due to water and carbon dioxide injections; followed some years later by global cooling through drastically reduced insulation, all of this happening in pitch black. The dust settling process might last a year to a decade with catastrophic effects on the land and sea food chains (Alvarez et al., 1980; Napier and Clube 1979; Toon et al. 1990). At these extreme energies, multiple bombardments may be involved over several hundred thousand years or more, and in addition prolonged trauma are likely due to dustings from Urge, disintegrating comets. However this aspect of the hazard is less well understood and the timescales involved are more of geological than societal concern.

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Novice 1AC (6/15)AND, IMPACTS AREN’T SURVIVABLE – ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE IS TOO RAPID AND MASSIVE

Chapman 04 (Senior Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, Dept. of Space Studies, “the Hazard of near-Earth asteroid impacts on earth”, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 222)

I have argued that impacts must be exceptionally more lethal globally than any other proposed terrestrial causes for mass extinctions because of two unique features: (a) their environmental effects happen essentially instantaneously (on timescales of hours to months, during which species have little time to evolve or migrate to protective locations) and (b) there are compound environmental consequences (e.g., broiler-like skies as ejecta re-enter the atmosphere, global firestorm, ozone layer destroyed, earthquakes and tsunami, months of ensuing “impact winter”, centuries of global warming, poisoning of the oceans). Not only the rapidity of changes, but also the cumulative and synergistic consequences of the compound effects, make asteroid impact overwhelmingly more difficult for species to survive than alternative crises. Volcanism, sea regressions, and even sudden effects of hypothesized collapses of continental shelves or polar ice caps are far less abrupt than the immediate (within a couple of hours) worldwide consequences of impact; lifeforms have much better opportunities in longer-duration scenarios to hide, migrate, or evolve. The alternatives also lack the diverse, compounding negative global effects. Only the artificial horror of global nuclear war or the consequences of a very remote possibility of a stellar explosion near the Sun could compete with impacts for immediate, species-threatening changes to Earth's ecosystem. Therefore, since the NEA impacts inevitably happened, it is plausible that they—and chiefly they alone—caused the mass extinctions in Earth's history (as hypothesized by Raup [60]), even though proof is lacking for specific extinctions. What other process could possibly be so effective? And even if one or more extinctions do have other causes, the largest asteroid/comet impacts during the Phanerozoic cannot avoid having left traces in the fossil record.

AND

YOU AS THE JUDGE SHOULD AVOID THE ILLUSION OF INVULNERABILITY – EVALUATE LONG TERM SURVIVAL IMPACTS BEFORE SHORT TERM ISSUES

Verschuur 96 (Gerrit, Adjunct Prof of Physics at U of Memphis, Impact: the Threat of Comets and Asteroids, p. 216)

There is an even more subtle reason why we are unlikely to take collective and significant action to assure the long-term survival of our species. It manifests as the psychological syndrome known as the "illusion of invulnerability." Individuals cannot believe that they will personally succumb in the next catastrophe. This syndrome is at play in those who live happily in earthquake zones, in floodplains, or on the sides of active volcanoes. The existence of the syndrome poses a paradox. If we are concerned about the long-term survival of civilization, we must overcome our genetic predisposition to deal only with the immediate future. Dealing with short-term issues is natural in all animals, and represents the practical way in which to survive from day to day. However, this predisposition is not conducive to assuring a long-term existence. Perhaps that is what is at issue. We have learned much about the natural universe in recent years, and the mind's eye has only just developed the ability to scan millions of years of time. Yet that seems to be no more than an intellectual exercise with little practical use. Perhaps the evolution of our species may yet depend on whether we can succeed in making very long term plans and carrying them out for the benefit of life on earth. Scientific discovery has brought us to the point where we confront the awesome probability that collision with an earth-crossing object will bring an end to civilization. It is no longer a question of whether a massive impact will occur in the future; it is only a matter of when. Even if we think it will be a thousand years from now, the point of raising the issue is to ask ourselves what we plan to do about it. It may be time

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to think in terms of thousands of years into the future. I am assuming that we care that our species will be around for a long time, and that this question is worth thinking about.

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Novice 1AC (7/15)AND

IGNORE THE NEGATIVE’S PROBABILITY ARGUMENTS – IF THERE’S ANY ASTEROID RISK VOTE AFF TO AVOID CERTAIN EXTINCTION

Barbee 09 (4/1, Brent W., BS, Aerospace Engineering degree from UT Austin; MS in Engineering from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas, Austin specializing in Astrodynamics and Spacecraft Mission Design, currently working as an Aerospace Engineer and Planetary Defense Scientist with the Emergent Space Technologies company in Greenbelt, Maryland, teaches graduate Astrodynamics in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The University of Maryland, College Park, “Planetary Defense”, http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/apjinternational//apj-s/2009/1tri09/barbeeeng.htm)

It is generally accepted that statistics and probability theory is the best way to handle partial information problems. Gamblers and insurance companies employ it extensively. However, one of the underlying premises is that it is acceptable to be wrong sometimes. If a gambler makes a bad play, the hope is that the gambler has made more good plays than bad ones and still comes out ahead. This however is not applicable to planetary defense against NEOs. Being wrong just once may prove fatal to millions of people or to our entire species. If we trust our statistical estimates of the NEO population and our perceived collision probabilities too much, we risk horrific damage or even extinction. This is how we must define the limit for how useful probability theory is in the decision-making process for defense against NEOs.

AND,

INDEPENDENTLY, YOU HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO PROTECT THE ENTIRETY OF HUMANITY

Urias 96 [John M – colonel, “Planetary Defense: Catastrophic Health Insurance for Planet Earth”, A research paper presented to Air Force 2025, October, http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch16.pdf]

Although promising signs exist in terms of more frequent workshops, technical discussions, and increased international cooperation, we must address several issues to resolve the planetary defense problem by 2025. First and foremost, does the global community believe that an unacceptable risk to the EMS exists, and, if so, is it committed to developing a solution? Obviously, the concepts presented in this paper require many new technologies that will take much time, talent, and resources to develop. Commitment does not 62 equate to paper studies alone—it must be supported by substantial research and funding for these studies to be followed up with action. In an era of declining budgets, this issue presents a significant dilemma for leaders across the world. It should be remembered, however, that the threat of nuclear war was uncertain and even improbable during the cold war period; yet, the US spent more than $3 trillion over this 50-year time frame to maintain its strength against this uncertainty. These authors suggest that one needs only to consider the potential catastrophic effects from a large (>1 km diameter) ECO impact to conclude that humanity has a moral obligation to protect humanity.

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Novice 1AC (8/15)NEXT - ADVANTAGE TWO IS NANOTECHNOLOGY

NEO SURVEYS LEAD TO INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE COOPERATION

Shapiro 10 (IRWIN I., Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Chair FAITH VILAS, MMT Observatory at Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, Vice Chair MICHAEL A’HEARN, University of Maryland, College Park, Vice Chair ANDREW F. CHENG, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory FRANK CULBERTSON, JR., Orbital Sciences Corporation DAVID C. JEWITT, University of California, Los Angeles STEPHEN MACKWELL, Lunar and Planetary Institute H. JAY MELOSH, Purdue University JOSEPH H. ROTHENBERG, Universal Space Network, Committee to Review Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies Space Studies Board Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~planets/sstewart/reprints/other/4_NEOReportDefending%20Planet%20Earth%20Prepub%202010.pdf)

The probability of a devastating impact in the United States is small compared to the likelihood of an impact in other nations, most with far fewer resources to detect, track and defend against an incoming NEO. The NEO hazard, however, is such that a single country, acting unilaterally, could potentially solve the problem. Although the United States has a responsibility to identify and defend against threats with global consequences, the United States does not have to bear the full burden for such programs. There have been several international efforts to characterize objects in the near-Earth environment, but these studies have generally been driven by scientific curiosity and were not designed to address the risk of NEOs. As NEO survey requirements evolve to fainter objects and mitigation strategies are refined, additional resources will be necessary that could be provided by other developed countries. International partnerships can be sought with other science organizations, notably but not exclusively space agencies, in the areas of surveys, characterization, and mitigation technologies. NEO discovery rates and survey completeness could be significantly enhanced through coordinated use of telescopes owned and operated by other nations. Future NEO space missions, carried out either by the United States, other nations, or a cooperation of countries could be optimized for characterization that enables development and refinement of mitigation strategies. Space missions to test such strategies could also be developed on a cooperative basis with other nations, making use of complementary capability. While a coordinated intergovernmental program is needed to address the full spectrum of activities associated with NEO surveys, characterization, and mitigation, an important first step in this direction would be to establish an international partnership, perhaps of space agencies, to develop a comprehensive strategy for dealing with NEO hazards. Many scientists, especially among the world’s planetary scientists, have been concerned for well over a decade with the danger posed to Earth from the impact of an asteroid or comet. Officials from various nations have echoed these concerns. Thus, a substantial and important component of the existing international cooperation is the informal contact between professional scientists and engineers, mainly of space-faring nations, but also including official representatives from some other countries. International conferences and small meetings, as well as the Internet, allow experts in different aspects of space science and technology, including asteroid detection and mitigation, to personally know their counterparts in other nations. Such connections often lead to offers of, or requests for, aid in solution of common problems arising in the course of their work. Veterans of the United States or Russian space programs often participate either openly or behind the scenes in the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency, and Indian and Chinese space activities. Nuclear-weapons designers in both Russia and the United States have often met to discuss use of nuclear explosives to effect asteroid orbit changes.

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Novice 1AC (9/15)AND, INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE COOPERATION IS KEY TO NANOTECH

CORDIS no date given (“International Co-operation,” CORDIS is the Community Research and Development Information Service of the European Commission, http://cordis.europa.eu/nanotechnology/src/intlcoop.htm)

International co-operation is essential for the development of nanotechnology, where scientific and technical challenges are huge and a wider critical mass is beneficial. International collaboration can lead to better focus nanotechnology research and overcoming knowledge gaps more rapidly. Eventually, synergies can be created that can contribute to improve the quality of life in all parts of the world. International co-operation in nanotechnology is needed both with countries that are economically and industrially advanced (to share knowledge and profit from critical mass) and with those less advanced (to secure their access to knowledge and avoid any ‘nano divide’ or knowledge apartheid). An international dialogue on a responsible development and use of nanotechnology is needed, as well.

AND, NANOTECH LEADS TO IMMORTALITY – RENDERS NATURAL DEATH OBSOLETE

Freitas 08 (“Death Is An Outrage,” http://www.immortek.com/node/7, Robert A., Senior Research Fellow at Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, JD, winner of the 2009 Feynman Prize in nanotechnology theory, the 2007 Foresight Prize in Communication, and the 2006 Guardian Award from Lifeboat Foundation.)

The greatest advances in halting biological aging and preventing natural death are likely to come from the fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology. That is, nanomedicine. Nanomedicine is most simply and generally defined as the preservation and improvement of human health, using molecular tools and molecular knowledge of the human body. In the near term, say, the next 5 years, the molecular tools of nanomedicine will include biologically active materials with well-defined nanoscale structures, such as dendrimer-based organic devices and pharmaceuticals based on fullerenes and organic nanotubes. We should also see genetic therapies and tissue engineering becoming more common in medical practice. In the mid-term, the next 5 or 10 years or so, knowledge gained from genomics and proteomics will make possible new treatments tailored to specific individuals, new drugs targeting pathogens whose genomes have now been decoded, stem cell treatments to repair damaged tissue, replace missing function, or slow aging, and biological robots made from bacteria and other motile cells that have had their genomes re-engineered and re-programmed. We could also see artificial organic devices that incorporate biological motors or self-assembled DNA-based structures for a variety of useful medical purposes. The end result of all these nanomedical advances will be to enable a process I call "dechronification" – or, "rolling back the clock." I see no serious ethical problems with this. According to the volitional normative model of disease that is most appropriate for nanomedicine, if you're physiologically old and don't want to be, then for you, oldness and aging are a disease, and you deserve to be cured. After all, what's the use of living many extra hundreds of years in a body that lacks the youthful appearance and vigor that you desire? Dechronification will first arrest biological aging, then reduce your biological age by performing three kinds of procedures on each one of the 4 trillion tissue cells in your body. First, a nanodevice will be sent to enter every tissue cell, to remove accumulating metabolic toxins and undegradable material. Afterwards, these toxins will continue to slowly re-accumulate as they have all your life, so you'll probably need a whole-body cleanout to prevent further aging, maybe once a year. Second, chromosome replacement therapy can be used to correct accumulated genetic damage and mutations in every one of your cells. This might also be repeated annually. Third, persistent cellular structural damage that the cell cannot repair by itself such as enlarged or disabled mitochondria can be reversed as required, on a cell by cell basis, using cellular repair devices. We're still a long way from having complete theoretical designs for many of these machines, but they all appear possible in theory, so eventually we will have good designs for them.

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Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (10/15)NEXT - ADVANTAGE THREE IS ACCIDENTAL WAR

SMALL ASTEROID IMPACT CONFUSED FOR NUCLEAR ATTACK WITHOUT SPACE DETECTION – HAPPENS EVERY YEAR

David 02 (Leonard, Senior Space Writer, Space.com, “First Strike or Asteroid Impact?” June 6, http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc060702.html)

Military strategists and space scientists that wonder and worry about a run-in between Earth and a comet or asteroid have additional worries in these trying times. With world tensions being the way they are, even a small incoming space rock, detonating over any number of political hot-spots, could trigger a country's nuclear response convinced it was attacked by an enemy. Getting to know better the celestial neighborhood, chock full of passer-by asteroids and comets is more than a good idea. Not only can these objects become troublesome visitors, they are also resource-rich and scientifically bountiful worlds. Slowly, an action plan is taking shape. Noted asteroid and comet experts met here May 23-27, taking part in the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference 2002. Sweat the small stuff Being struck by a giant asteroid or comet isn't the main concern for Air Force Brigadier General Simon Worden, deputy director of operations for the United States Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. He sweats the small stuff. Worden painted a picture of the next steps needed in planetary defense. His views are not from U.S. Department of Defense policy but are his own personal perspectives, drawing upon a professional background of astronomy. For example, Worden said, several tens of thousands of years ago an asteroid just 165-feet (50 meters) in diameter punched a giant hole in the ground near Winslow, Arizona. Then there was the Tunguska event. In June 1908, a massive fireball breached the sky, then exploded high above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia. Thought to be in the range of 165-feet (50 meters) to 330 feet (100 meters) in size, that object created a devastating blast equal to a 5 to 10 megaton nuclear explosion. A similar event is thought to have taken place in the late 1940s in Kazakhstan. "There's probably several hundred thousand of these 100-meter or so objects...the kind of ones that we worry about," Worden said. However, these are not the big cosmic bruisers linked with killing off dinosaurs or creating global catastrophes. On the other hand, if you happen to be within a few tens of miles from the explosion produced by one of these smaller near-Earth objects, "you might think it's a pretty serious catastrophe," Worden said. "The serious planetary defense efforts that we might mount in the next few decades will be directed at much smaller things," Worden said. Some 80 percent of the smaller objects cross the Earth's orbit, "some of which are potentially threatening, or could be in the centuries ahead," he said. Nuclear trigger One set of high-tech military satellites is on special round-the-clock vigil. They perform global lookout duty for missile launches. However, they also spot meteor fireballs blazing through Earth's atmosphere. Roughly 30 fireballs detonate each year in the upper atmosphere, creating equivalent to a one-kiloton bomb burst, or larger, Worden said. "These things hit every year and look like nuclear weapons. And a couple times a century they actually hit and cause a lot of damage," Worden said. "We now have 8 or 10 countries around the world with nuclear weapons...and not all of them have very good early warning systems. If one of these things hits, say anywhere in India or Pakistan today, we would have a very bad situation. It would be awfully hard to explain to them that it wasn't the other guy," Worden pointed out. Similarly, a fireball-caused blast over Tel Aviv or Islamabad "could be easily confused as a nuclear detonation and it may trigger a war," Worden said. Meanwhile, now moving through the U.S. Defense Department circles, Worden added, is a study delving into issues of possibly setting up an asteroid warning system. That system could find a home within the Cheyenne Mountain Complex outside Colorado Springs, Colorado. The complex is the nerve center for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Space Command missions. Next steps Where do we go from here? An important step, Worden said, is cataloging all of the objects that are potentially threatening, down to those small objects that could hit and destroy a city. To do this type of charting, military strategists now champion a space-based network of sensors that keep an eye on Earth-circling satellites. These same space sentinels could serve double-time and detect small asteroids, he said

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Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (11/15)AND, ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR WAR KILLS BILLIONS

Forrow et al 98 (Lachlan Forrow, Bruce G Blair, Ira Helfand, George Lewis, et al, Author Affiliation: From the Division of Gencral Medicine and Primary Care, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, (L.F.); the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (B.G.B.); Physicians for Social Responsibility, (I.H.); Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (G.L., TP); the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, (VS.); Barry S. Levy Associates and Tufts University School of Medicine, (B.S.L.); the Department of Radiology and the Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University, (H.A.); and Mount Sinai School of Medicine; New England Journal of Medicine, April 30)

A missile launch activated by false warning is thus possible in both U.S. and Russian arsenals. For the reasons noted above, an accidental Russian launch is currently considered the greater risk. Several specific scenarios have been considered by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization of the

Department of Defense.31 We have chosen to analyze a scenario that falls in the middle range of the danger posed by an accidental attack: the launch against the United States of the weapons on board a single Russian Delta-IV ballistic-missile submarine, for two reasons. First, the safeguards against the unauthorized launch of Russian submarine-based missiles are weaker than those against either silo-based or mobile land-based rockets, because the Russian general staff cannot continuously monitor the status of the crew and missiles or use electronic links to override unauthorized launches by the crews. Second, the Delta-IV is and will remain the mainstay of the Russian strategic submarine fleet.27,32,33 Delta-IV submarines carry 16 missiles. Each missile is armed with four 100-kt warheads and has a range of 8300 km, which is sufficient to reach almost any part of the continental United States from typical launch stations in the Barents Sea.34,ss These missiles are believed to be aimed at "soft" targets, usually in or near American cities, whereas the more accurate silo-based missiles would attack U.S. military installations.36 Although a number of targeting strategies are possible for any particular Delta-IV, it is plausible that two of its missiles are assigned to attack war-supporting targets in each of eight U.S. urban areas. If 4 of the 16 missiles failed to reach their destinations because of malfunctions before or after the launch, then 12 missiles carrying a total of 48 warheads would reach their targets. POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES OF A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT We assume that eight U.S. urban areas are hit: four with four warheads and four with eight warheads. We also assume that the targets have been selected according to standard military priorities: industrial, financial, and transportation sites and other components of the infrastructure that are essential for supporting or recovering from war. Since low altitude bursts are required to ensure the destruction of structures such as docks, concrete runways, steel-reinforced buildings, and underground facilities, most if not all detonations will cause substantial early fallout. Physical Effects Under our

model, the numbers of immediate deaths are determined primarily by the area of the "superfires" that would result from a thermonuclear explosion over a city. Fires would ignite across the exposed area to roughly 10 or more calories of radiant heat per square centimeter, coalescing into a giant firestorm with hurricane-force winds and average air temperatures above the boiling point of water. Within this area, the combined effects of superheated wind, toxic smoke, and combustion gases would result in a death rate approaching 100 percent.3' For each 100-kt warhead, the radius of the circle of nearly 100 percent short-term lethality would be 4.3 km (2.7 miles), the range within which 10 cal per square centimeter is delivered to the earth's surface from the hot fireball under weather conditions in which the visibility is 8 km (5 miles), which is low for almost all weather conditions. We used Census CD to calculate the residential population within these areas according to 1990 U.S. Census data, adjusting for areas where circles from different warheads overlapped.38 In many urban areas, the daytime population, and therefore the casualties, would be much higher. Fallout The cloud of radioactive dust produced by low altitude bursts would be deposited as fallout downwind of the target area. The exact areas of fallout would not be predictable, because they would depend on wind direction and speed, but there would be large zones of potentially lethal radiation exposure. With average wind speeds of 24 to 48 km per hour (15 to 30 miles per hour), a 100-kt low-altitude detonation would result in a radiation zone 30 to 60 km (20 to 40 miles) long and 3 to 5 km (2 to 3 miles) wide in which exposed and

unprotected persons would receive a lethal total dose of 600 rad within six hours.39 With radioactive contamination of food and water supplies, the breakdown of refrigeration and sanitation systems, radiation-induced immune suppression, and crowding in relief facilities, epidemics of infectious diseases would be likely.40 Deaths Table 1 shows the estimates of early deaths for each cluster of targets in or near the eight major urban areas, with a total of 6,838,000 initial deaths. Given the many indeterminate variables (e.g., the altitude of each warhead's detonation, the direction of the wind, the population density in the fallout zone, the effectiveness of evacuation procedures, and the availability of shelter and relief supplies), a reliable estimate of the total number of subsequent deaths from fallout and other sequelae of the attack is not possible. With 48 explosions probably resulting in thousands of square miles of lethal fallout around urban areas where there are thousands of persons per square mile, it is plausible that these secondary deaths would outnumber the immediate deaths caused by the firestorms. Medical Care in the Aftermath Earlier assessments have documented in detail the problems of caring for the injured survivors of a nuclear attack: the need for care would completely overwhelm the available health care resources.1-5,41 Most of the major medical centers in each urban area lie within the zone of total destruction. The number of patients with severe burns and other critical injuries would far exceed the available resources of all critical care facilities nationwide, including the country's 1708 beds in burn-care units (most of which are already occupied).42 The danger of intense radiation exposure would make it very difficult for emergency personnel even to enter the affected areas. The nearly complete destruction of local and regional transportation, communications, and energy networks would make it almost impossible to transport the severely injured to medical facilities outside the affected area. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, which resulted in a much lower number of casualties (6500 people died and 34,900 were injured) and which had few of the complicating factors that would accompany a nuclear attack, there were long delays before outside medical assistance arrived.41 FROM DANGER TO PREVENTION Public health professionals now recognize that many, if not most, injuries and deaths from violence and accidents result from a predictable series of

events that are, at least in principle, preventable.44,45 The direct toll that would result from an accidental nuclear attack of the type described above would dwarf all prior accidents in history. Furthermore, such an attack , even if accidental, might prompt a retaliatory response resulting in an all-out nuclear exchange. The World Health Organization has estimated that this would result in billions of direct and indirect casualties worldwide.4

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Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (12/15)NEXT IS SOLVENCY

SPACE SURVEYS PROVIDE THE KEY DATA TO STOP IMPACTS

NRC 10 (National Research Council Committee to Review Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies, “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies,” http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12842)

Combined ground- and space-based surveys have a number of advantages. Such surveys discover more NEOs of all sizes, including a substantial number smaller than 140 meters in diameter. These combined surveys also provide more characterization data about the entire NEO population. With both infrared and visible data for most targets, it would be possible to obtain accurate diameter estimates for all objects, as well as measurements of their albedos and their surface and thermal properties. These high-value characterization data could help to guide mitigation campaign studies. Additionally, a dual survey provides much information on the population of objects smaller than 140 meters in diameter.

AND, SPACE TELESCOPES DETECT ALL ASTEROIDS AND COMETS

IAA 09 (International Academy of Astronautics, “Dealing With The Threat To Earth From Asteroids And Comets”, http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%203/sg35/sg35finalreport.pdf)

Ground-based telescopes cannot observe during local daytime or when there are clouds, and their sensitivity is seriously affected by moonlight and atmospheric effects. One or more dedicated robotic observatory telescopes of greater capability than the upcoming NEOSSat instrument could readily be placed into Earth orbit or in solar orbit near the Earth or at a Earth-Sun (E-S) Lagrangian point. Such telescopes would be able to observe nearly continuously, and their angular coverage would be almost spherical except for angles near the Sun. At the L2 point the telescope would also be continuously shielded from interference by sunlight. There would be no cloud or day-night effects either, and therefore a telescope in orbit could have 10-18 times the observing time on NEOs compared to any one ground observatory, and could be dedicated to NEO observation rather than be shared with other astronomical observations, as is typical with large ground telescope facilities. The sensitivity obtained from a space-based observatory like this could be sufficient even with an aperture diameter of approximately one meter, which is easily achievable with today’s technology. Future technology will support space telescopes whose primary mirrors consist of thin membranes, and thus will be orders of magnitude lighter and cheaper than space telescopes such as the Hubble or James Webb. Feasibility studies2 have indicated that with 5-10 years of technology development such membrane mirror space telescopes could be developed to have apertures of at least 25 meters yet weigh under 700 kg. One such telescope placed into a solar orbit near Earth would extend the detection distance and sensitivity enormously so that a 1 km long-period new apparition comet could be detected well beyond 10 AU . Detection this far away could yield on the order of 5-6 years of warning time,3 provided that the comet’s orbital path could be calculated with sufficient accuracy. Since such instruments would rapidly detect asteroids and short period comets as well, those as small as 70 meters could be detected at 2.5 AU, and 140 m asteroids could be detected at 5 AU. These detection distances are far greater than can be rapidly accomplished with ground-based telescopes. Thus, large yet lightweight space-based telescopes would be extremely valuable as a principal means of detecting, tracking, and providing up to several years warning time on long-period comets, in the not too distant future.

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Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (13/15)AND, IF WE IDENTIFY OBJECTS WE CAN STOP THEM EASILY

Bottke et al 04 (William F. Bottke, Jr., Southwest Research Institute; Alessandro Morbidelli, Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur; Robert Jedicke, University of Hawai’i; Mitigation Of Hazardous Comets And Asteroids, p. 1-2)

It is now generally accepted that impacts of large NEOs represent a hazard to human civilization. This issue was brought into focus by the pioneering work of Alvarez et al. (1980), who showed that the extinction of numerous species at the Cretaceous–Tertiary geologic boundary was almost certainly caused by the impact of a massive asteroid (at a site later identified with the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula) (Hildebrand et al. 1991). Today, the United Nations, the US Congress, the European Council, the UK Parliament, the IAU, NASA, and ESA have all made official statements that describe the importance of studying and understanding the NEO

population. In fact, among all worldwide dangers that threaten humanity, the NEO hazard may be the easiest to cope with, provided adequate resources are allocated to identify all NEOs of relevant size. Once we can forecast potential collisions between dangerous NEOs and Earth, action can be taken to mitigate the potential consequences.

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Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (14/15)

AND, GLOBAL WAR IS UNTHINKABLE AND IMPOSSIBLE – NO CHANCE OF VICTORY, POPULAR PRESSURE CHECKS

Fettweis 3, “revisiting Mackinder and angell: the obsolescence of Great power geopolitics, comparative strategy 22:2, p 113-5

Mackinder can be forgiven for failing to anticipate the titanic changes in the fundamental nature of the international system much more readily than can his successors. Indeed, Mackinder and his contemporaries a century ago would hardly recognize the rules by which the world is run today—most significantly, unlike their era, ours is one in which the danger of major war has been removed, where World War III is, in Michael Mandelbaum’s words, “somewhere between impossible and unlikely.” Geopolitical and geo-strategic analysis has not yet come to terms with what may be the central, most significant trend of international politics: great power war, major war of the kind that pit the strongest states against each other, is now obsolete. John Mueller has been the most visible, but by no means the only, analyst arguing that the chances of a World War III emerging in the next century are next to nil. Mueller and his contemporaries cite three major arguments supporting this revolutionary, and clearly controversial, claim. First, and most obviously, modern military technology has made major war too expensive to contemplate. As John Keegan has argued, it is hard to see how nuclear war could be considered “an extension of politics by other means”—at the very least, nuclear weapons remove the possibility of victory from the calculations of the would-be aggressor.28 Their value as leverage in diplomacy has not been dramatic, at least in the last few decades, because nuclear threats are not credible in the kind of disagreements that arise between modern great powers. It is unlikely that a game of nuclear “chicken” would lead to the outbreak of a major war. Others have argued that, while nuclear weapons surely make war an irrational exercise, the destructive power of modern conventional weapons make today’s great powers shy away from direct conflict. The world wars dramatically reinforced Angell’s warnings, and today no one is eager to repeat those experiences, especially now that the casualty levels among both soldiers and civilians would be even higher. Second, the shift from the industrial to the information age that seems to be gradually occurring in many advanced societies has been accompanied by a new definition of power, and a new system of incentives which all but remove the possibility that major war could ever be a cost-efficient exercise. The rapid economic evolution that is sweeping much of the world, encapsulated in the “globalization” metaphor so fashionable in the media and business communities, has been accompanied by an evolution in the way national wealth is accumulated. For millennia, territory was the main object of war because it was directly related to national prestige and power. As early as 1986 Richard Rosecrance recognized that “two worlds of international relations” were emerging, divided over the question of the utility of territorial conquest.31 The intervening years have served only to strengthen the argument that the major industrial powers, quite unlike their less-developed neighbors, seem to have reached the revolutionary conclusion that territory is not directly related to their national wealth and prestige. For these states, wealth and power are more likely to derive from an increase in economic, rather than military, reach. National wealth and prestige, and therefore power, are no longer directly related to territorial control.32 The economic incentives for war are therefore not as clear as they once may have been. Increasingly, it seems that the most powerful states pursue prosperity rather than power. In Edward Luttwak’s terminology, geopolitics is slowly being replaced by “geoeconomics,” where “the methods of commerce are displacing military methods—with disposable capital in lieu of firepower, civilian innovation in lieu of military–technical advancement, and market penetration in lieu of garrisons and bases.”33 Just as advances in weaponry have increased the cost of fighting, a socioeconomic evolution has reduced the rewards that a major war could possibly bring. Angell’s major error was one that has been repeated over and over again in the social sciences ever since—he overestimated the “rationality” of humanity. Angell recognized earlier than most that the industrialization of military technology and economic interdependence assured that the costs of a European war would certainly outweigh any potential benefits, but he was not able to convince his contemporaries who were not ready to give up the institution of war. The idea of war was still appealing—the normative cost/benefit analysis still tilted in the favor of fighting, and that proved to be the more important factor. Today, there is reason to believe that this normative calculation may have changed. After the war, Angell noted that the only things that could have prevented the war were “surrendering of certain dominations, a recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.”34 The third and final argument of Angell’s successors is that today such a revolution of ideas has occurred, that a normative evolution has caused a shift in the rules that govern state interaction. The revolutionary potential of ideas should not be underestimated. Beliefs, ideologies, and ideas are often, as Dahl notes, “a major independent variable,” which we ignore at our peril.35 “Ideas,” added John Mueller, are very often forces themselves, not flotsam on the tide of broader social or economic patterns . . . it does not seem wise in this area to ignore phenomena that cannot be easily measured, treated with crisp precision, or probed with deductive panache.36 The heart of this argument is the “moral progress” that has “brought a change in attitudes about international war” among the great powers of the world,37 creating for the first time, “an almost universal sense that the deliberate launching of a war can no longer be justified.”38 At times leaders of the past were compelled by the masses to defend the national honor, but today popular pressures push for peaceful resolutions to disputes between industrialized states. This normative shift has rendered war between great powers “subrationally unthinkable,” removed from the set of options for policy makers, just as dueling is no longer a part of the set of options for the same classes for which it was once central to the concept of masculinity and honor.

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Eden Prairie 2011-12Novice Asteroids 1AC

Novice 1AC (15/15)AND, NO CAUSAL CONNECTION BETWEEN ECONOMIC DECLINE AND WAR

Ferguson 06, - MA, PHD, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Senior Reseach Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University (Niall, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct)

Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars .

AND, GLOBAL WARMING IS INEVITABLE – WE’RE LOCKED IN TO TERMINALLY HIGH LEVELS OF CARBON

Cost of Energy 10 (“What we need vs. what we’ve got,” 11/13/10, http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2010/11/13/what-we-need-vs-what-weve-got/)

I feel compelled to point out yet again that the 2C/450 ppm line in the sand is not nearly as certain as a lot of people would like us to believe; increasingly, it feels like an exercise in whistling past a graveyard. We’re currently at a warming of about 0.8C above pre-industrial times, and we’re already awash in “it’s worse than we thought” observations, with decades of additional warming already unavoidable, barring the extremely rapid, massive roll out of a CO2 extraction technology.[1] I find it increasingly hard to convince myself that the “right” level of CO2, meaning one that avoids catastrophic sea level rise, a freshwater crisis far worse than the drought gripping various places around the world today, acidified oceans, increasingly severe tropical storms, etc., isn’t much closer to James Hansen’s 350 ppm than the “official” level of 450 ppm. In other words, since we’re currently right around 390 ppm, the chances are good that we’ve already passed the maximum “acceptable” CO2 level. For those who didn’t get the perhaps too subtle title, it’s a reference to one of my favorite moments in a movie, the scene in Apollo 13 where an engineer and one of the astronauts not on the mission are struggling to come up with a way to power-up the Command Module, and the engineer finally says in exasperation, “You’re telling me what you need, and I’m telling you what you’ve got.” In the case of our emissions, far too many people are still saying, in effect, that because it’s too “hard” (read:expensive or inconvenient) to decarbonize at the rate science says we must that we therefore “need” to emit a lot of CO2 for decades. What we’ve got, in terms of our remaining emissions allowance, is far less. Spaceship Earth, like Apollo 13, illustrates what happens when a human view of the universe comes into conflict with the universe itself. [1] I’ve become convinced that the single least convenient fact about climate change is CO2’s long atmospheric lifetime. Virtually every time I talk to a newcomer about climate change I find that he or she holds the often unstated assumption that if we got serious about CO2 and cut emissions “a lot” that the level of it in the atmosphere would drop in a matter of weeks or months and we’d be well on our way to defusing climate change. The fact that we’re locked into our past and current emissions essentially forever in human terms almost universally terrifies lay people when they first hear it.

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