Global WarmingCody Schummer 1st hour

Relevant History

Emissions of greenhouse gases grew 2.2% per year between 2000 and 2010, compared with 1.3% per year from 1970 to 2000.[

Climate model projections were summarized in the 2013 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They indicated that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 0.3 to 1.7 °C (0.5 to 3.1 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario using stringent mitigation and 2.6 to 4.8 °C (4.7 to 8.6 °F) for their highest.

Affirming these findings in 2013, the IPCC stated that the largest driver of global warming is carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and land use changes such as deforestation.

Status quo

Likely you have heard the sound bite that “97% of climate scientists” accept the global warming “consensus”.  Which is what gives global warming advocates the confidence to call climate skeptics “deniers,” hoping to evoke a parallel with “Holocaust Deniers,” a case where most of us would agree that a small group are denying a well-accepted reality.  So why do these “deniers” stand athwart of the 97%?  Is it just politics?  Oil money? Perversity? Ignorance?

Affirmative Perspective

First, ocean acidification is defined as the rapid increase in acidity and rapid drop in pH levels of our oceans. This effect, especially given the speed of its occurrence, is producing geochemical changes in our oceans that is devastating for marine biodiversity and lots of marine animals who can’t tolerate the lower pH levels. According to Joe Romm, a fellow at American Progress and editor of Climate Progress, “if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about…[and] that is a recipe for mass extinction” (Romm, 2012).

Second, the Amazon rainforest and other tropical rainforests are more likely to be negatively affected by CO2 than positively affected by it. Insects on CO2-fertilized plants consume a small portion of the leaf tissue, grow more slowly, and die more often. As a result, many insect species in the Amazon rainforest are likely to be pushed “into extinction” according to Jonathan Adams, Assistant Professor in Ecology at Rutgers University. And if you think killing off the bugs in the rainforest is a good thing, think again.

Third, massive carbon releases from the bottom of the ocean also become increasingly likely with unchecked carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide, absorbed by the oceans from the atmosphere as we release it, begins to accumulate on along the ocean bottom which produces increases in movement of carbonic acid concentrations. The real danger is when the “biological carbon pump” no longer remains stable and instead, a “massive carbon release (which, in an oceanic turnover, might also be accompanied by large amounts of highly toxic released hydrogen sulfide)” occurs which “could become…catastrophe on a planetary scale” (Brandenberg and Paxon, 1999). 

Negative Perspective

The internal link portion of a case is almost always the weakest portion of any affirmative’s warming advantage. By nature of its large magnitude impact of global proportions, the single action of the plan is often the targeting point for the negative when applying defense to a case’s warming advantage. This strategy of applying pressure on the ability for the aff to spillover, is only useful to a point. If the affirmative case also has a utilitarian value criterion and pushes hard on an impact framing argument that high magnitude impacts, even with minor risk of solvency, still come first, it can be extremely difficult for you as the negative to win all of the necessary arguments to win the debate. The solution to this problem is to impact turn the aff’s internal link rather than terminal impact and to advantage counterplan with a different internal link mechanism.

There are two broad categories of internal links to warming that every aff’s internal link falls under. Warming internal links are always either reduction internal links (carbon dioxide emissions, carbon sink preservation, etc.) which entails reducing or preventing an increase in some bad thing, typically CO2, that contributes to warming, or they are adaptation internal links which entails adapting to the effects of global warming in some form or other. On this resolution, almost all affirmative internal links will be some flavor of a reduction internal link typically centralized around claims of sustainable developing reducing carbon emissions or the protection of current forest carbon sinks that are otherwise being cut down as economic growth drives deforestation in multiple developing countries across the globe.

Work Cited

http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/conservative-vs-liberal-beliefs/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/07/29/206499/how-the-status-quo-media-failed-on-climate-change/

http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/2/debating-and-defending-global-warming

http://www.globalissues.org/article/233/climate-change-and-global-warming-introduction