Will Malson
GW Kritikal 1AC
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Introduction One of the most unfortunate catastrophes of the late 20th and of the 21st century so far has been the remarkable rejection of scientific fact. The most notorious of these is the great fallacy of human-caused climate change. It is to escape from this logical entrapment that we stand Resolved: That the USFG should significantly reform its environmental policy.
Observation 1: Resolution Analysis The resolution regarding environmental policy must first be defined before we delve into the aspects of climate change. To define it, we present Observation 1: Resolution Analysis. First off, what is an environmental policy? Environmental Policy is defined as “The official rules or regulations concerning the environment adopted, implemented, and enforced by some governmental agency.” This definition is from members from the University of Minnesota, Vassar College, and St. Cloud State University in the Book “Environmental Science: A Global Concern.” [William P. Cunningham (University of Minnesota), Mary Ann Cunningham (Vassar College), Barbara Woodworth Saigo (St. Cloud State University), The Text Book “Environmental Science: A Global Concern”, McRawHill (Online Learning Center) Glossary Page, Copyright 2003, http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0070294267/student_view0/glossary_el.html] Secondly, why does the definition matter? To answer that, let’s substitute the word into the resolution. By substitution, we get: Resolved: That the USFG should significantly reform its official rules or regulations concerning the environment (etc).
Will Malson
GW Kritikal 1AC
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Observation 2: Plan Text Let’s get right into our proposed change – instead of sticking with the status quo, or the current system, we present observation 2: the plan. Agency & Enforcement: Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, and the EPA. Mandates: 1. All domestic policies that are solely intended to reduce global warming or climate change in any way should be rescinded or amended to exclude such regulations or incentives. No Funding will be necessary. Timeline: Work to achieve the mandates will begin immediately. All Affirmative speeches may clarify the plan as needed.
Will Malson
GW Kritikal 1AC
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Advantage 1: The Public’s Belief (1/2) This leads us to advantage 1: the public’s belief: we will have three points under this. First, When it comes to global warming, the public’s perception and governmental action are unfortunately very similar. People have strayed from the actual scientific evidence and instead have been captured by the media’s constant hype of the “threat of global warming.” In fact, Scientists are actively creating misleading examples of increasing climate change Patrick J. Michaels [Ph.D. Climatology, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a retired Research Professor of Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia. Former state climatologist for Virginia (1980-2007). He is the author of several books including: Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming, 1992, Satanic Gases, as coauthor 2002, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media, published by the Cato Institute, 2004, and Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming as editor and coauthor, 2005], “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know”, Foreword, Pages 6-7, Publisher: Cato Institute (Edition Not Stated edition), January 25, 2009, ISBN-10: 1933995238, ISBN-13: 978-1933995236 (HEG)
Will Malson
GW Kritikal 1AC
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Second, this fracturing of scientific reality only extenuates the fantastic misconception that there is human-caused climate change. Humans not only don’t cause global warming, but there has been no increase in global temperature in the past 11 years. Paul Hudson [Climate Correspondent, BBC News. Holds a “first-class degree” in Geophysics (physics of the earth) and Planetary Physics from the University of Newcastle], "What happened to global warming?" Published by the BBC News, October 9, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm, bold in original (HEG) (Note about misspellings an’ stuff – this is a British publication, so things like “sceptics" etc. are technically correct. And he did mean to say “hotting up”, that’s just the way they say it.) This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on? Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this? During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly. Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun. But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Third, the desirability of our plan should be evaluated in the context of the discourse surrounding global warming. You should vote for the team that provides the most enlightened discourse surrounding climate change – it is our opinion that we the affirmative team has done so and thus warrants your ballot at the end of the round. Understanding what is actually happening is key to proper discourse on global warming: this leads us to:
Will Malson
GW Kritikal 1AC
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Advantage 2: Science Restored (1/2) Advantage 2: science restored. First, re-flow the previous evidence – there hasn’t been any warming in the past 11 years. Second, let’s look at the actual science in two more ways: First: Empirics. In the past, a warmer climate was natural – this just proves that humanity is not a variable in climate change. Joseph L. Bast [President and CEO of The Heartland Institute (a nonprofit, nonpartisan center for public policy research), Founding Director, officer, and member of the executive committee, State Policy Network, 1991-1997. Board of Advisors, Advocates for Self-Government, 2003 - current. Board of Advisors, Illinois Policy Institute, 2004 - current. Board of Advisors, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, 2005 - current. Board of Directors, American Conservative Union, 2007 - current. Honors: 1996 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award for Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (with coauthors), Elected to the Board of Directors of American Conservative Union in 2007], “Eight Reasons Why 'Global Warming' Is a Scam”, Published by The Heartland Institute, February 1, 2003, http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/iecws/news/global_warming_is_a_scam.pdf, brackets added (HEG) 5. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization. Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the "climatic optimum," was even warmer and marked "a time when mankind began to build its first civilizations," observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. "There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilization today."
Will Malson
GW Kritikal 1AC
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The second way to look at the actual science is by looking at the raw data. The raw data from satellites show that the overall global temperature is fairly constant. This is more accurate when compared to localized temperature increases Gary Benoit [editor of The New American (John Birch Society-affiliated biweekly magazine whose mission is encapsulated by the slogan on its cover — “That Freedom Shall Not Perish.”). He has been associated with the magazine since its inception in 1985 and has been editor for most of its existence. Joined The John Birch Society while still a teenager in 1968 and has been a member ever since. He joined the staff in 1977 and over the years has held a number of different positions in the organization including eastern manager of the Society’s Speakers Bureau, director of the Society’s Research Department, national director of the Society’s tax reform program, and editor of The John Birch Society Bulletin. He graduated from the University of Lowell (now the University of Massachusetts – Lowell) magna cum laude in physics in 1976 and worked one summer at a nuclear power plant while still in college. But before graduating he decided he wanted to make the John Birch Society his career, believing that the Society provides the organized means for preserving our freedoms. Benoit is qualified to speak on a variety of subjects including the fundamentals of Americanism, The John Birch Society, The New American, the politics and science of global warming, and major media bias including how to read between the lines], “Myths and Meteorology”, July 30, 2001, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fnews/1435624/posts, brackets added (HEG) Facts, Not Fiction Scientific conclusions should be based on observable facts, not political agendas. Yet politics is driving the global warming debate. "Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens," Dr. Lindzen lamented in his Wall Street Journal article. "This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions." Yet rational decisions can be made. All that is necessary is to separate the politics from the science and examine the known facts: • Climate variability: The climate is constantly changing, not just season to season but year to year, century to century, and millennium to millennium. In his Journal article, Dr. Lindzen pointed out that "two centuries ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A millennium ago, during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty years ago, we were concerned with global cooling." During the global cooling scare of the 1970s, some observers even worried that the planet was on the verge of a new ice age. • The actual temperature record: The global mean temperature is approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago. Based on surface readings, the temperature rose prior to 1940, perhaps in response to the end of the little ice age, which lasted until the 19th century. From about 1940 until about 1975, the temperature dropped, sparking the above-mentioned global cooling scare. More recently the temperature has been rising again, sparking concerns about global warming. The accuracy of the surface temperature record must be kept in mind when evaluating trends measured in fractions of a degree. One significant problem is the extent to which the data may be skewed as a result of urbanization. Atmospheric physicist Dr. S. Fred Singer wrote in a letter that appeared in the May issue of
Science: "The post-1940 global warming claimed by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] comes mainly from distant surface stations and from tropical sea surface readings, with both data sets poorly controlled (in both quality and location)." On the other hand, "surface data from wellcontrolled U.S. stations (after removing the urban ‘heat-island’ effects) show the warmest years as being around 1940." In his testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee on July 18th of last year, Singer bluntly stated: "The post-1980 global warming trend from surface thermometers is not credible." Dr. Singer, who established the U.S. Weather Satellite Service and served as its first director, is just one of many scientists who believe that temperature data collected by weather satellites provides a far better measuring stick than the surface readings. After all, the satellite data is truly global, and it is not skewed by the urban heat effect. The satellite data from January 1979 (when this data first became available) through May 2001 shows a warming trend of 0.038 degrees Celsius per decade — or less than fourtenths of one degree per century. This minuscule rate of increase, which could change, is far less than the dramatic increases in temperature the forecasters of doom have been warning against. This brings us to the conclusion of the advantage and to the case: public perception of global warming is one of fear and belief; science is actual withheld in order to excite people into this incorrect belief. Our case is essential – you should vote for the affirmative in order to enlighten the public discourse on the subject and restore science to its proper place.