Asteroids Neg

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Das Asteroids Neg KCKCC

***Refugee CP
Extinction Refugee CP
The United States federal government should construct and maintain self-sufficient,
remote, permanently occupied refuges meant to protect humanity from extinction events.
That Solves
(Matheny 07)
Jason Matheny (Research Associate at the Future of Human Institute at Oxford University) Risk Analysis Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction 2007
Elaborate bunkers exist for government leaders
to occupy during a nuclear war (McCamley, 2007 ). And remote facilities are planned to protect crop
seeds from "nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and climate change" (Hopkin, 2007 ). But I know of no self-sufficient, remote,
permanently occupied refuge meant to protecthumanity from a range of possible extinction events. Hanson (2007) argues that a refuge permanently housing
as few as 100 people would significantly improve the chances of human survival during a
range of global catastrophes. The Americas and Polynesia were originally populated by
fewer than 100 founders (Hey, 2005 ; Murray-McIntosh et al., 1998 ). Although it would take thousands of years for 100 people to repopulate Earth, this
would be a small setback compared to extinction.
Perhaps more cost effective than building refuges in space would be building them on Earth.
The counterplan protects humanity against all existential threats and is more cost-effective
than the plan.
(Bostrom 11)
Nick Bostrom, 2011 Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, and Director of the Programme on the Impacts of Future
Technology at the University of Oxford, recipient of the 2009 Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School
of Economics, 2011 Existential Risks FAQ, Version 1.0, ExistentialRisk.com, Available Online at http://www.existentialrisk.com/faq.html, Accessed 07-04-2011)
A possibly somewhat more cost-effective project might be to operate a bunker or refuge that could enable a
small human population to survive a wide range of catastrophic scenariosplagues, nuclear winters, supervolcanic eruptions, asteroid
impacts, complete collapses of human food production systems, and various unknown unknowns. The refuge might be buried deep
underground, stocked with supplies to last a decade or more, and designed to be easily defendable. Ideally it would be
continually staffed by a quarantined population and stocked with tools that survivors could use in subsistence
agriculture upon emerging from the shelter in the aftermath of a civilization-destroying catastrophe.
2NC NB Spending DA
Spending is a net benefit the CP costs $4,500
(Laplaca 11)
BRYAN LAPLACA, COLUMNIST, Executive Editor Hoboken Progress Editor North Jersey Media Group Privately Held; Newspapers industry Staff Writer North Jersey Media Group Back in
the Day - Sept. 28, 1961: North Jersey prepares for nuclear war .SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2011
http://www.northjersey.com/community/history/back_in_the_day/130544543_Sept__28__1961_North_Jersey_prepares_for_nuclear_war.html?c=y&page=1)
All five firehouses in Wayne had a 32-page booklet for residents entitled "The Family Shelter," containing detailed information and drawings for the construction and equipping of shelters for use
"in the event of enemy attack." In Butler, the first building permit for a six-person fallout shelter had been issued. R. Kennedy Carpenter, the CD director, said, "Somebody has to start the ball
rolling." Suburban Trends pushed for readers to build outdoor, aboveground fallout shelters in places where underground rocks or water prevented going below, and included directions on how to
Two walls of concrete blocks are constructed at least 20 inches apart. The space
build them. "
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between them is filled with pit-run gravel or earth. The walls are held together with metal ties placed
in the wet mortar as the walls are built," we explained. The cost of building such a shelter ran about $700. That's about $4,500
in today's dollars. "Any mass of material between you and the fallout will cut down the amount of radiation that reaches you. Sufficient mass will make you safe," we advised. "There is about the
same amount of shielding in eight inches of concrete, for instance, as in 12 inches of earth, 16 inches of books, or 30 inches of wood. In most of the country, everywhere except in areas hit by the
heaviest fallout, these thicknesses would give ample protection for a basement shelter."
2NC Perm
Trade off DA focusing on one existential risk diverts attention from all others the CP
avoids this because it addresses all of them
BOSTROM 2011 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk (Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
one might want to reduce ones credence in exciting scenarios and upgrade
ones credence in boring outcomes. At the same time, however, one should avoid relying too heavily on a silliness heuristic, which penalizes hypotheses
merely because similar-sounding ideas have been promoted by people viewed as not respectablecrackpots, radicals, science-fiction aficionados, and other non-serious folk. We
might find existential-risk concerns gaining traction, only to see the ensuing resources
funneled almost exclusively to the study of asteroid hazard, climate change, and a few other such respectable risks to the
To correct for the good-story bias,
neglect of more speculative risks, such as machine superintelligence, advanced nanotechnology weaponry, future dystopian evolutionary scenarios, simulation-shutdown scenarios, synthetic
even though the cumulative existential risks flowing

from these and other silly-seeming sources may be orders of magnitude greater than
those from the more respectable and well-established fields. (Another plausible diversion is
that research mainly gets directed at global catastrophic risks that involve little or no
existential risk.)
biology mishaps and misuse, space-colonization races, and global totalitarianism
***Solvency
1NC Solvency
1. Status quo solves 93 percent of asteroids are tracked now
(Klotz 12/8)
Irene Klotz , writer, NASA catalogs thousands of asteroids near Earth Reuters, December 8, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/usspace-asteroids-idUSTRE7B615O20111208, accessed December 15, 2011.
the U.S. space

agency was ordered by Congress in 1998 to find 90 percent of objects near Earth that are 1 km (0.62 of a mile)
in diameter or larger. The survey is now complete, with 93 percent of the objects accounted for ,
astronomer Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on Tuesday . Using
NASA's recently retired Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope, scientists also found about 20,500 smaller
asteroids near Earth. Previous studies estimated there were 36,000 to 100,000 of these objects, which have a diameter of about 100 meters (110 yards). "They could still pack quite a
punch," Mainzer told Reuters, adding that "any impact is not a very likely event." But a major asteroid strike could and has happened. An asteroid or
About 1,000 asteroids big enough to cause catastrophic damage if they hit Earth are orbiting relatively nearby, a NASA survey shows. In a project known as Spaceguard,
comet between 5 and 10 km (3.1 and 6.2 miles) in diameter is believed to have smashed into Earth some 65 million years ago, triggering global climate changes that led to the extinction of
Scientists are now using archived WISE

observations to home in on potentially hazardous objects whose orbits come within about 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of
dinosaurs and other animals. "We know something that big could wipe out mostly all life on Earth," Mainzer said.
Earth. So far, there is no plan about what to do if an asteroid was discovered to be on a collision course with Earth.
2. We cant deflect wont sustain deflection programs
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(Bennett 10)
James Bennett (Eminent Scholar and William P. Snavely Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at George Mason University, and Director of The John M. Olin
Institute for Employment Practice and Policy) THE DOOMSDAY LOBBY 2010
Absent a panic, the lack of any popular support for Earth defense vexes the Earth-savers. One lesson of human history, say Robert L. Park of the American Physical Society, Lori B. Garver of
societies will not sustain indefinitely a defense against

an infrequent and unpredictable threat. There is almost no popular constituency for asteroid defense,
and it is sheer hubris to believe that any defense we are capable of designing today will be
of anything more than historical interest to our descendants a century or a millennium hence.57 We are not the alpha and
the omega. Our most sophisticated weapons will be to our distant descendants as spears are to us. As for defense against comets, the lesser-discussed threat from
the skies, they are astonishingly intractable, write Clark R. Chapman, Daniel D. Durda, and Robert E. Gold.58 Hard to find, their
motions difficult to predict, their structure and consistency questionable, comets are the
wild card in the deck of Earth-killers, though since one hasnt hit us in at least many tens of millions of years, only the most hopeless superlunary
the National Space Society, and Terry Dawson of the U.S. House of Representatives, is that
hypochondriac is going to lose much sleep over them.
3. Even if its feasible Bureaucratic inertia means the US wont deflect

(Schweickart 04)
Rusty Schweickart (Astronaut) Asteroid Deflection: An International Challenge December 2004
In any event, the minimal policy decision involved in any asteroid deflection would be whether to deflect it at all or simply suffer the consequences of the nominal impact. If the incoming
asteroid were on the order of 100 meters in diameter the resultant impact would be on the order of 80 MT and the resulting damage could lie entirely within the borders of one nation. If this
nation were not a space faring nation who would respond to a request to mount such a mission? Conversely if the nominal impact were located within the borders of a space faring nation, would
the risk to others along the deflection risk path deter that nation from mounting a deflection mission? Who will make these decisions? Who will pay for a deflection mission? Who will be charged
with the responsibility for executing such a mission? How is liability to be assigned? Who will trade off local devastation vs. placing many remote lives at slight risk? Who will determine the
planning criteria? Who will monitor and/or control the deflection mission? These and many other difficult and critical policy questions are implicit in the concept of asteroid deflection. In all but
the exceptional case the choices to be made involve several, if not many, nations. The entire subject is planetary in scope since asteroid impacts may (and eventually will) strike anywhere on the
The easiest and perhaps most likely course of action for international
institutions facing questions of this kind is to simply avoid them. And yet, for those involved in the Spaceguard Survey and
others informed on the subject it is clear that addressing these choices only after the announcement of a pending
impact will result in great contention, self serving argument, and power politics . Once a specific IP is
determined the hope for rationale, equitable policies emerging from such a belated undertaking becomes
futile. In the limit an asteroid impact which destroys all human civilization is possible, though extremely improbable. No other natural disaster is capable of such destruction, and yet this
globe. An Alternative to Institutional Inertia
natural hazard, unlike most others, can actually be prevented by human intervention. We therefore face the daunting challenge of convincing the international community to plan for a highly
many more immediate problems involving the lives of millions

of people face the international community on virtually a continuous basis. It is natural
to avoid this issue. Risk situations characterized by extreme infrequency and devastating consequences are
difficult for individual human beings, let alone bureaucratic institutions to handle. This is even more the case
when the questions to be addressed are so intractable and without precedent. Yet the time for rational policy to be developed to guide behavior and
unlikely but devastating global event, and to do it now. Yet
prepare for such an eventuality is prior to the discovery of an asteroid actually bound for an impact. The reality we face, however, is that there is about a one in twenty chance that within the next
decade or so we may in fact discover such a pending impact. Worse still, from the standpoint of alarming the public, is the much higher likelihood that in completing the inventory of NEOs down
to 100 meters, the astronomical community will in fact discover one or more objects destined to pass within several Earth radii. The problem in this case will arise in that it may take many years
before the telescopic observations are able to distinguish between this near miss and an impact. During this period of time no one will be able to state with certainty whether or not an impact is
coming. This circumstance, with perhaps a 50/50 likelihood of occurrence, will be extremely frustrating to the professionals and alarming to the public.
2NC Squo Solves, yo.

Extend 1NC number one NASA is detecting multiple asteroids now this solves all their
advantages well have enough warning to deflect
AND, prefer our argument its citing official NASA documents
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AND, the proof is in the pudding NASA has solved 93 percent of asteroids and 100
percent of earth killers
(Myslewski 9/30)
Rik Myslewski, writer, The Register, September 30, 2011,NASA: 'Asteroid armageddon less likely than we feared'.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/30/neowise_asteroid_survey/,
Accessed November 3, 2011.
there are fewer Earth-threatening asteroids than previously thought. The bad news: there are still plenty of
dinosaur extinctionsized globe crushers out there, awaiting their turn. "The risk of a really large asteroid impacting the Earth
before we could find and warn of it has been substantially reduced," said Tim Spahr, the director of the
Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' wonderfully named Minor Planet Center when announcing the results of a multi-year
NASA survey. You'll notice, however, that Spahr spoke only of the ability to warn of an impending extinction event or even a smaller metro-mashing. He didn't say anything
about doing something to stop an asteroid with mayhem on its mind. Still, though, it's nice to know what's out there and thanks to
the latest development in the two-decade Spaceguard project, what's out there is a wee bit less threatening than boffins had
feared. New estimates, well, estimate that there are "only" about 19,500 not 35,000 midsize near-Earth asteroids.
First the good news:
Unfortunately, we don't know exactly where most of those space rocks are their number is an educated estimate, not a one-by-one census. We have a far better idea of where the big boys
there are 981 near-Earth asteroids of diameters of one kilometer and

larger, and we've got tabs on 911 of them. Of those 911, NASA notes reassuringly, "None of
them represents a threat to Earth in the next few centuries." NASA also believe that it has the
addresses and flight paths of each and every one of the massive 10-kilometer earth
exterminators, kinsmen to the one that dropped by 65 million years ago to say goodbye to the dinosaurs.
reside. According to NASA estimates,
AND, all extinction level asteroids have been mapped

(Morrison 10)
David Morrison (Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe) Impacts and Evolution: Protecting Earth from Asteroids Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society December 2010
the impact hazard was treated with substantial skepticism two decades ago when surveys were i rst proposed, it has become
conventional wisdom that we should carry out the Spaceguard Survey for asteroids large enough to threaten global disaster (e.g., Posner 2004; Clarke 2007; Slovic 2007;
Although
Morrison 2007). The question whether need a much more expensive survey for sub-km asteroids is still being debated, however (Atkinson et al. 2000; Chapman 2000, 2007a; Morrison et al.
the original Spaceguard Survey goals are within reach
2003; Stokes 2003; Sidle 2007; NRC Report 2010). As

, the residual hazard
lies in the few undiscovered asteroids larger than 1 km and in the sparsely sampled sub-km asteroids. The largest hazard will be from tsunamis caused by impactors several hundred meters in
diameter, but this is primarily a risk to property since fatalities can be greatly reduced by the application of tsunami warning systems. The most life-threatening hazard from sub-km impacts is
For asteroids with diameter of 5 km

or more, which is roughly the threshold for an extinction event, our knowledge is complete
today. Astronomers have already assured us that we are not due for an extinction-level
impact from an asteroid within the next century. Barring a very unlikely strike by a large comet, we are not about to
go the way of the dinosaurs. Thus, the rest of this paper focuses on the more frequent impacts by asteroids with diameters from 5 km down to the atmospheric cutassociated with airbursts over land. The survey results have already transformed our understanding of the impact risk.
off at about 50 m diameter, spanning the range from global catastrophic disasters at the top end down to local endurable disasters at the lower end of the energy range.
2NC Cant Deflect

Extend 1NC number two Earth cant deflect because of decay in ability future
generations will not continue deflection capacities
AND, theres tech barriers no reliable system now
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(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, accessed November 3, 2011.
The detection and cataloguing of 90% of asteroids of 1 km size or larger is essentially completed by now through the Spaceguard Survey, and NASA has been instructed to extend the survey to
asteroids as small as 140 m within the next decade. However, even if those goals are met most of these asteroids are not and will not be characterized in that time frame. Given the wide diversity
in characteristics of these objects and the continuing dynamics in the NEO population the certainty of a successful deflection, even if all systems of the mitigator work as designed, is not great.
neither todays technologies nor those likely to be available in the next decade or two lead
to systems with extremely high reliability. Thus the probability of a successful deflection of a
NEO with single mission using any known concept is far lower than desired, given the likely horrendous
Furthermore
consequences of a failure. It is therefore clear that the development and deployment of a robust, multiple option, redundant, coordinated system of multiple and diverse systems is needed; and
that the deflection of a NEO cannot be a mission but must rather be a campaign of multiple orchestrated missions19. Furthermore, these missions will probably have to be deployed sequentially
in increasingly capable stages, with means in place to rapidly assess the status and effects of the missions as they unfold. All this requires not only the hardware and software to physically mount
the campaign against a NEO but an extensive, expensive, and well coordinated command and control infrastructure which has been internationally designed, vetted, manned, and accepted. This
task is technically not very different from structures emplaced by the adversaries during the cold war, or from current means in place by the space-faring nations for command and control of their
space activities. However the political and policy obstacles to be overcome are much greater, even if the payoff will also be greater. These issues are discussed in depth in the Policy chapter.
AND, theres another warrant no international cooperation

(Schweickart 08)
Russell L. (Rusty) Schweickart , retired business and government executive and serves today as Chairman of the Board of the B612 Foundation. The organization, a non-profit private
foundation, champions the development and testing of a spaceflight concept to protect the Earth from future asteroid impacts and flew on Apollo 9, ASTEROID THREATS: A CALL FOR
GLOBAL RESPONSE, Space Explores, 2008, http://www.space-explorers.org/ATACGR.pdf, accessed November 3, 2011.
As previously pointed out, humankind now possesses the technology to provide the first two essential elements necessary to protect the planet from asteroid impacts. Early impact warning is
already underway for the largest objects of concern and new telescopes will soon increase the capability to provide impact warning for more numerous smaller objects of concern. Asteroid
The missing
third element is the readiness and determination of the international community to take
concerted action in response to a perceived threat to the planet. An adequate global action program must include deflection
criteria and campaign plans which, can be implemented rapidly and with little debate by the international community. In the absence of an agreed-upon
decision-making process, we may lose the opportunity to act against a NEO in time, leaving
evacuation and disaster management as our only response to a pending impact. A single such missed
deflection capability, while not yet proven, is possible with current spaceflight technology and is being actively investigated by several of the worlds space agencies.
opportunity will add painful fault-finding to the devastating physical effects of an impact. The international community should begin work now on forging its warning, technology, and decisionmaking capacities into an effective shield against a future collision.
AND, you cause more problems false alarms means we wont care when a strike is
possible
(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, accessed November 3, 2011.
In
the early phases of discovery and orbit refinement the impact time and location will be very
imprecise. False alarms, even and perhaps especially from authoritative sources who may in fact believe in their projections, excite
the media and engage the public. The periodic outbreak of attention from a false alarm may
seem to be beneficial at first glance, as it serves to raise public awareness of the threat. However, any awareness enhancing features are outweighed by
detrimental consequences including inducing panic and unnecessary anxiety; desensitizing
the public or trivializing the threat; and diverting the attention and damaging the
[credibility] credible of the NEO community.
False Alarms False alarms, often referred to within the NEO community as one day wonders, are another unique characteristic of NEO impact threats, and deserve special attention.
2NC Wont Try To Deflect

Extend 1NC number three political will gets in the way of any solving deflection
politicians are more interested in SHORT TERMS gains then deflection means no chance
of deflection
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AND, prefer our argument congress is the most partisan it has ever been
AND, more evidence, Self-interest means we wont deflect
(Schweickart 04)
Rusty Schweickart (Astronaut) Asteroid Deflection: An International Challenge December 2004
the deflection path will lie entirely within the bounds of a single nation
state, the general case is one where the path of risk will cross several, or even many, national borders. It would therefore seem appropriate that the many legal and risk sharing
This challenge is, by its nature, international. While there is the exceptional circumstance where
issues embedded in deflecting asteroids be addressed by either the United Nations or some other authoritative international policy institution. The timing for such policy consideration is a
challenging issue in itself. The quality of information on a pending NEO impact is highly variable over time. It ranges from a surprise impact with no prior knowledge to the case of 1950 DA 2
where we know today that there is a probability between 0 and 0.33% that this 1.1 km asteroid will impact Earth on March 16, 2880. For all other known NEOs between these two cases we can
only state that with the exception of ~ 45 of them the remaining 2700 pose no threat to the Earth for the next 100 years. The residual 45 pose a very small but non-zero threat of an Earth impact at
various times within the next 100 years. The issue then, of what will we know and when will we know it, becomes extremely critical to the timing and development of a coordinated international
The natural temptation with such an improbable event is to wait

until it becomes either a certainty or near-certainty before addressing it seriously. The price that would be
paid for such an avoidance option in this instance will be the wielding of extreme
selfserving national influence in the policy making process. If, e.g., it is discovered that a modest NEO will impact in Japan and that the deflection path would
public policy on the NEO environmental threat.
take it across Korea and over Beijing and China prior to liftoff, one can easily imagine the difficulty in only then initiating international deliberations on appropriate deflection policies. Clearly,
rational mission planning criteria and risk sharing policies should be discussed and even put into formal treaty documents well before the specifics of a particular impact come to light. Objective
evaluation of risk trade-offs and rational mission design will be far easier to achieve in such a proactive environment than in the power-politics confrontation that would dominate a wait and see
alternative. An even more difficult, though similar, situation applies to the considerations of mission execution. What agency or agencies of any national government will be trusted to truck a
100+ MT bomb across the countryside in order to eliminate certain devastation in a neighboring country? Could one seriously imagine today the U.S. DoD being accepted by the world as the
responsible agency for deflecting an asteroid from an impact in Afghanistan when the path of deflection would take it directly across Tehran? Of course this is a highly improbable example, but
the likelihood that similar political considerations will not exist when we discover a probable
NEO impact is dangerous wishful thinking. CONCLUSION The Real Deflection Dilemma will arise when the people of Earth awake to discover
that a near Earth asteroid is headed for an impact with the planet. It will present itself as a terrible choice; do nothing to prevent it and suffer the consequences, or mount a mission to deflect it
from impact thereby, in the process, placing a swath of people and property not otherwise at risk in jeopardy. In a very real sense, however, we are already ensnared in this dilemma, for we all
know that such a moment in time will come. Therefore our own Real Deflection Dilemma is whether to confront the intractable policy choices implicit in protecting the Earth from asteroids now,
or to avoid this terrible responsibility and force some future generation to face them in real time when they will become all but impossible to resolve
***Large Asteroids Adv

1NC Large Asteroids
Large asteroids never happen
(Bennett 10)
small falling bodies
are of no
concern
The
est
, those with diameters under a few meters,
practical
, says Chapman, and in fact they are to be desired, at
least by those who keep their eyes on the skies watching for brilliant fireballs whose burning up in the atmosphere provides a show far more spectacular than the most lavish Fourth of July
They explode
too high in the atmosphere to cause serious harm. The next largest potential strikers of Earth are those in the Tunguska range of 30 meters100 meters. The shock
fireworks. Even bodies with diameters of 1030 meters, of which Chapman estimates six may fall to earth in a century, cause little more than broken windows.
waves from the atmospheric explosion would topple trees, wooden structures and ignit[e] fires within 10 kilometers, writes Chapman. Human deaths could result if the explosion took place
over a populated area. Though Chapman estimates the likelihood of a Tunguska occurring in any given century at four in ten, it is worth noting that there is no evidence that such an explosion has
given that the location of such an

explosion is utterly unpredictable, it would be far more likely to happen over an ocean or a
desert than over, say, Tokyo or Manhattan. The after effects would be minimal, and Chapman says that nothing practical can be done about this modest hazard other than to clean up after
killed a single human being in all of recorded history. Either were overdue or that 40 percent is high. Moreover,
the event. In fact, It makes no sense to plan ahead for such a modest disaster other than educating the public about the possibility. The cost of a telescopic survey capable of picking up
bodies of such diminutive size would be prohibitive. It would be the ultimate Astronomers Full Employment Act.
A body of 100 meters300 meters in

pegs the chances of such a
diameter would either explode at low altitude or upon impact with the ground; it would be regionally devastating, but Chapman
catastrophe at 1 percent per century. A small nation could be destroyed by the impact of a body of 300 meters1 km in diameter, or a flying mountain of sorts,
which would explode with energy yield ten times more than the largest thermonuclear bomb ever tested. If striking land, it would carve out a crater deeper than the Grand Canyon. If it hit a
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populated area, the death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands. The likelihood of such a collision Chapman estimates at 0.2 percent per century. An asteroid or comet of 13 kilometers in
The impact
of a body more than 3 kilometers in diameter might plunge the Earth into a new Dark Age, killing most of its inhabitants, though the chances of this are
extremely remote less than one in 50,000 per century. Finally, mass extinction would likely
occur should a body greater than 10 kilometers pay us a visit, though the chances of this are less
than one in a million every century, or so infinitesimal that even the most worry-wracked
hypochondriac will not lose sleep over the possibility. In fact, for any impact with a Chapman-calculated likelihood of less than one in a
diameter would cause major regional destruction, possibly verging on civilization-destruction level. Chapman puts the chances of this at 0.02 percent per century.
thousand per century, he concedes that there is little justification for mounting asteroid-specific mitigation measures. The chance of a civilization-ender is so remote that he counsels no
advance preparations or almost none. For Chapman recommends further study of NEOs, as well as investigation into methods of their diversion. 82 This is exactly what the NEO lobby
wants.
Prefer our evidence were the only ones who can quantify risk they exaggerate by a
factor of 10,000
(Bennett 10)
The closest thing to an impact even distantly related to the catastrophic occurred just
over a century ago. In June 1908, in an event that is central (because seemingly unique in modern times) to the killer asteroid/comet lobby, the so-called Tunguska asteroid,
70 yards (60 meters) in length, exploded about 8 kilometers above the ground in remote Siberia. Its explosion unleashed 20 or more megatons of energy and flattened about 2,000 square
kilometers of forest. 30 No human casualties were reported, as this was an unpopulated spot in Siberia. Sharon Begley of Newsweek once quoted John Pike of the Federation of American
Scientists as saying that a Tunguska-sized rock from outer space could kill 70,000 people if it hit in rural American and 300,000 if it struck an urban area. 31 Maybe. Although it helps to
its
death toll was
zero
remember that a Tunguska-sized rock did hit the Earth a century ago, and
human
a nice round number:
. Does Tunguska have antecedents? As Gregg
Easterbrook elucidated in the Atlantic Monthly, geophysicist Dallas Abbott of Columbia University has argued that space rocks of, respectively, 35 kilometers and 300 meters struck the Indian
Ocean around 2800 B.C. and the Gulf of Carpentaria in 536 A.D. 32 The latter led to poor harvests and cold summers for two years, while the former may have unleashed a planetary flood.
Abbotts evidence is a crater 18 miles in diameter at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, the impact from which she believes a 600-foot-high tsunami wracked incredible devastation. It should be
noted, as the New York Times did, that Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. Abbott and what she calls her band of
a decidedly minority view of the matter, and while that does not mean that they are wrong, it does mean that their
alternative estimation of the frequency of 10-Megaton-size impacts once every 1,000 or so years
as opposed to the more generally accepted once every million years should be viewed
with great skepticism. 33 (Easterbrook, ignoring the majority of scientists who dispute Abbotts contentions, concludes that Our solar system appears to be a far more
misfits in the Holocene Impact Working Group take
dangerous place than was previously believed.) Easterbrook is a fine science writer but his piece contains certain telltale phrases (100-kilometers asteroids are planet killers and NASAs
asteroid and comet-hunting efforts are underfunded) that point to an expensive conclusion. He takes up the cause of Dallas Abbott, who complains that The NASA people dont want to
scientists estimate that a dangerous object strikes the

Earth every 300,000 to one million years, Easterbrook asks William Ailor of The Aerospace Corporation, a think tank for the Air
believe me. They wont even listen. Consider this quote: After noting that
Force, what his assessment of the risk is. Ailors answer: a one-in-10 chance per century. 3
No existential riskempirics.
(Bennett 10)
It should be noted that the Alvarez et al. hypothesis was not universally accepted. As Peter M. Sheehan and Dale A. Russell wrote in their paper Faunal Change Following the Cretaceous
Tertiary Impact: Using Paleontological Data to Assess the Hazards of Impacts, published in Hazards Due to Comets & Asteroids (1994), edited by Tom Gehrels,
many
paleontologists resist accepting a cause and effect relationship between the iridum evidence, the
Chicxulub crater, and the mass extinction of 65 million years ago.15 For instance, Dennis V. Kent of the LamontDoherty
Geological Observatory of Columbia University, writing in Science, disputed that a high concentration of iridium is necessarily associated with an extraordinary extraterrestrial event and that,
a large asteroid is not likely to have had the dire consequences to life on the earth
that they propose.16 Briefly, Kent argues that the Alvarez team mistakenly chose the 1883 Krakatoa eruption as the standard from it extrapolated the effects of stratospheric
moreover,
material upon sunlight. Yet Krakatoa was too small a volcanic eruption from which to draw any such conclusions; better, says Kent, is the Toba caldera in Sumatra, remnant of an enormous
eruption 75,000 years ago. (A caldera is the imprint left upon the earth from a volcanic eruption.) The volume of the Toba caldera is 400 times as great as that of Krakatoa considerably closer to
the effect that an asteroid impact might have. Yet the sunlight attenuation factor [for Toba] is not nearly as large as the one postulated by Alvarez et al. for the asteroid impact. Indeed, the Toba
eruption is not associated with any mass extinctions, leading Kent to believe that the cause of the massive extinctions is not closely related to a drastic reduction in sunlight alone.17 Reporting
Many geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, and statisticians find

the geological evidence merely suggestive or even nonexistent and the supposed underlying mechanisms improbable at best. Even the iridium anomalies
in Science, Richard A. Kerr wrote that
have been challenged: Bruce Corliss of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute argues that the major extinctions associated with the KT event were not immediate and catastrophic but gradual
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and apparently linked to progressive climate change.18 Others argue that a massive volcanic event predating the Alvarezian killer asteroid created an overwhelming greenhouse effect and set the
dinosaurs up for the knockout punch. A considerable number of scientists believe that gradually changing sea levels were the primary cause of the KT Extinction. If either of these hypotheses is
the killer asteroid is getting credit that it does not

deserve. Even if the KT Extinction was the work of a rock from space, the Alvarez team credits a probable
interval of 100 million years between collisions with 10-km-diameter objects.19 The next rendezvous with annihilation wont be
overdue for about 40 million years. We have time.
true and a substantial number of geologists hold these positions then
Their authors distort the data.

(Bennett 10)
We should here acknowledge, without necessarily casting aspersions on any of the papers discussed in this chapter, the tendency of scientific journals to publish sexy articles. (Sexy, at least, by
the decidedly unsexy standards of scientific journals.) Writing in the Public Library of Science, Neal S. Young of the National Institutes of Health, John P.A. Ioannidis of the Biomedical Research
Institute in Greece, and Omar Al-Ubaydli of George Mason University applied what economists call the winners curse of auction theory to scientific publishing. Just as the winner in, say, an
papers that are selected

for publication in the elite journals of science are often those with the most extreme,
spectacular results. 63 These papers may make headlines in the mainstream press, which
leads to greater political pressure to fund projects and programs congruent with these extreme findings. As The Economist put it in an
auction of oil drilling rights is the firm that has made the highest estimation often overestimation of a reserves size and capacity, so those
article presenting the argument of Young, Ioannidis, and Al-Ubaydli, Hundreds of thousands of scientific researchers are hired, promoted and funded according not only to how much work they
authors understand full well that

studies with spectacular results are more likely to be published than are those that will not lead to a wire story. The problem,
though, is that these flashy papers with dramatic results often turn out to be false. 64 In a 2005 paper in the
produce, but also where it gets published. Column inches in journals such as Nature and Science are coveted;
Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ioannidis found that of the 49 most-cited papers on the effectiveness of medical interventions, published in highly visible journals in 1990
2004 a quarter of the randomised trials and five of six nonrandomised studies had already been contradicted or found to have been exaggerated by 2005. Thus, those who pay the price of the
winners curse in scientific research are those, whether sick patients or beggared taxpayers, who are forced to either submit to or fund specious science, medical or otherwise. The trio of authors
call the implications of this finding dire, pointing to a 2008 158 6 The Chicken Littles of Big Science; or, Here Come the Killer Asteroids! paper in the New England Journal of Medicine
showing that almost all trials of anti-depressant medicines that had had positive results had been published, while almost all trials of anti-depressants that had come up with negative results
remained either unpublished or were published with the results presented so that they would appear positive. Young, Ioannidis, and Al-Ubaydli conclude that science is hard work with
limited rewards and only occasional successes. Its interest and importance should speak for themselves, without hyperbole. Elite journals, conscious of the need to attract attention and stay
relevant, cutting edge, and avoid the curse of stodginess, are prone to publish gross exaggeration and findings of dubious merit. When lawmakers and grant-givers take their cues from these
journals, as they do, those tax dollars ostensibly devoted to the pursuit of pure science and the application of scientific research are diverted down unprofitable, even impossible channels. The
charlatans make names for themselves, projects of questionable merit grow fat on the public purse, and the disconnect between what is real and what subsidy-seekers tell us is real gets ever
wider. 65 The matter, or manipulation, of odds in regards to a collision between a space rock and Earth would do Jimmy the Greek proud. As Michael B. Gerrard writes in Risk Analysis in an
article assessing the relative allocation of public funds to hazardous waste site cleanup and protection against killer comets and asteroids, Asteroids and comets are the ultimate example of a
low-probability/high-consequence event: no one in recorded human history is confirmed to have ever died from one. Gerrard writes that several billion people will die as the result of an
impact at some time in the coming half million years, although that half-million year time-frame is considerably shorter than the generally accepted extinction-event period. 66 The expected
by jacking up the tiny possibility of such an

event even a little bit the annual death rate of this never-before experienced disaster
exceeds deaths in plane crashes, earthquakes, and other actual real live dangers. Death rates from outlandish or unusual causes are fairly steady
deaths from a collision with an asteroid of, say, one kilometer or more in diameter are so huge that
across the years. About 120 Americans die in airplane crashes annually, and about 90 more die of lightning strikes. Perhaps five might die in garage-door opener accidents. The total number of
deaths in any given year by asteroid or meteor impact is zero holding constant since the dawn of recorded time
2NC Large Asteroids Never Happen

Extend 1NC number one Large asteroids will NEVER happen the impacts they are
identifying are one percent PER CENTURY thats Bennett
AND, our evidence makes key distinction that they dont EXTINCTION LEVEL
asteroids are so rare that they never will happen its less than one in 50,000 per century
AND, reject their evidence long timeframe predictions arent accurate also means
timeframe outweighs
(Posner 04)
Richard Posner (Jurist on the United States Court of Appeals) Catastrophe, Risk and Response 2004
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an asteroid defense probably would not be airtight. The farther in the future
the estimated date of impact was, the more time there would be to deflect the asteroid but
also the greater the likelihood of an error, including an error that resulted in nudging the asteroid into a collision course with the earth. But unless
the risk of such an error were significant, even an imperfect defense would be beneficial. If the point of impact could be determined only a few weeks in advance, evacuation of
the population in its vicinity might save millions of lives even if the impact itself could not
be prevented. As this example shows, prevention is not the only possible response to a risk. This is true even when the risk is of
extinction. Were it known that the human race would become extinct in 10 years, people would respond by reducing their savings rate, since savings are a method of shifting
consumption to the future. The response would reduce, however slightly, the cost of the impending extinction. The risk of extinction is only one of the
risks created by the asteroid menace, and it is the aggregation of risks that should be the
focus of concern. Clark Chapman and David Morrison estimate that the chance of being killed by an asteroid of any size is approximately the same as that of being killed in an
airplane crash or a flood.40 John Lewis estimated that there is a 1 percent chance of an asteroid one or more kilometers
in diameter hitting the earth in a millennium, and that such a hit would kill an average of
one billion people.41 This figure equates to an expected annual death rate from such strikes of 10,000. Elsewhere in his book, it is true, Lewis estimated an annual death rate
Because of such uncertainties,
of only 1,479 even when the 1-kilometer threshold was dropped and all possible asteroid (and comet and meteorite) collisions were considered.42 But that figure was based on a Monte Carlo
simulation (Monte Carlo simulations map probabilities onto timescales, showing when a probabilistic event might occur on the timescale covered by the simulations) that was truncated at 10,000
years; thus a very rare, very destructive asteroid collision might not show up in the truncated simulation but would if the simulation covered a longer interval.
AND, Reject their evidence one in a million collisions occur over too long of a time frame
means theres no need for change
(Bennett 10)
NEOs
admit the inherent ambiguities
Chapman and Morrison have pondered

for many years now, and they
. Clark Chapman concedes that there is deep
disagreement over whether we should also protect against the impacts that happen every decade or so, like Tunguska though the last Tunguska happened not a decade but a century-plus ago.
Even these small events can kill people, but they are a thousand times less likely to do so than are quakes, floods and the other things that kill people all the time.123 David Morrison says,
Its truly an apocalyptic vision that you have here, but he concedes that there are very human reactions as to
whether this one-in-a-million-per-year risk [which may be an exaggerated number itself] is
worth worrying about or not.124 Clark Chapman adds that such oncein100 million year events are so rare that,
despite their apocalyptic horror, they need be of no concern to public officials.125 (Note the sharp difference in estimates of the chances of a civilization-ending
collision.) If a one-in-a-million or 65 million, or one trillion year doomsday comet suddenly raced in from the Oort Cloud, there is
simply no defense known or even contemplated against it. We would be out of luck. Yet as a team of researchers wrote in Reviews of Geophysics, asteroid and comet collisions
are so infrequent that they are normally disregarded on the timescale of human
evolution.126 Prudence dictates that we not entirely ignore the incredibly remote possibility that such a collision could happen at any time during the next 40 million years, but that
same prudence should keep us from panic, and prevent us from public expenditures that cannot be justified by any wisdom this side of sheer Hollywood-sized hysteria. Even without a rogue
asteroid banging into the Earth, life as we know it will be impossible on the planet in a billion or more years, when the Sun swells 250 times its current size, into a red giant star that will
swallow our home planet.127 If you wish to worry about that, fine. Same for those who stay up nights pulling out their hair over the prospect of an Armageddon asteroid. But the rest of us at
least those of us who do not make our living in the NEO detection field have quite enough else to worry about, including a swelling budget deficit whose size may soon dwarf the rockiest
chunks in the Asteroid Belt.
AND, not enough EXTINCITON LEVEL asteroids to pose a risk to Earth

(Posner 04)
Easterbrook has written seriously in the past about environmental problems, and the article that I am criticizing has a sober discussion of global warming.75 But the discussion ends
on a note of ridicule and belittlement: So be prepared: Stock lots of sweaters and a few Hawaiian shirts. The weather can be tricky this time of year.76 He actually exaggerates
the danger of asteroid collisions by saying that there are at least 1,100 near-earth objects
big enough to cause a Chicxulub strike,77 a reference to the asteroid collision that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The figure
(actually 1,148, and merely an estimate) refers to the number of near-earth objects with a diameter of 1 kilometer or more.78 As noted in chapter 1, very few of these have
a diameter as great as 10 kilometers, the estimated size of the dinosaur buster; only one that large has been
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detected thus far in the search for near-earth objects. Easterbrook concludes sensibly that our lack of a plan to develop a technology that could prevent such collisions may be unwise
and that perhaps NASA ought to take more seriously research into how to block a killer rock.79 (The hesitation in may and perhaps makes no sense given Easterbrooks belief that there are
1,100 near-earth objects as dangerous as the dinosaur slayer.) But that conclusion, which may be influenced by his exaggeration of the danger, is inconsistent with the title and tone of the article
and with his overall conclusion that we fret about proliferating nanobots or instant cosmic doom when we ought to be devoting our time and energy to confirmed worries like 41 million
It makes far more sense to

focus on mundane troubles that are all too real.80 The fallacy, a recurrent one in debates
over public policy,81 is to think that we have a choice between only two policies: we can
either expand health insurance or take measures against catastrophic risks. We can do
both. We would just have to give up something else. If the something else, for example subsidizing U.S. farmers or textile manufacturers, is a less valuable use of our resources, then giving
Americans without health insurance. A highcalorie, low-exertion lifestyle is far more likely to harm you than a vagrant black hole. . . .
it up in order to provide both more health insurance and more safety would be a good trade.
2NC Prefer Our Evidence

Extend the next piece of Bennett evidence were the only ones who can quantify the
probability of asteroid impacts this is a framing question that they dont meet its the
only way to objectively determine risk calculus, means you err neg on this question their
flaming rhetoric may sound cool but its basically random speculation
And, theyre evidence is not scientifically rigorous Bennett indicates that there is a
financial incentive for them to exaggerate the threat in order to get into top scientific
journals also they practice shoddy science, their estimates are off by a factor of 10,000,
means their assertions of probability arent reliable
AND, All of their predictions are scientifically unsound they make up risk calculations for
economic and political gain
(Mellor 10)
Felicity Mellor (Lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial College, London) Negotiating uncertainty: asteroids, risk and
the media 2010 http://pus.sagepub.com/content/19/1/16.full.pdf+html
scientists can actively
construct risk and publicly manage the uncertainties in their knowledge even in a field not clearly positioned
within a policy context. Indeed, the promotion of asteroids as risky objects can be seen as part of a strategy
to secure increased funding by transforming asteroid research into a public policy concern.
Most studies of the construction of uncertainty in public science have focused on policy contexts. The asteroid impact threat offers an example of how
Shackley and Wynne (1996) have argued that uncertainty claims function as boundary ordering devices which can stabilize and maintain the boundary between scientists and policymakers at the
same time as enabling interactions across the boundary. The absence of a prior public policy context for asteroid research meant that the uncertainty claims of the NEO scientists were often
addressed, through the news media, to a wider public audience. In this context, the differing interests of the scientists (to establish their authority and gain public support) and the journalists (to
entertain their audiences with newsworthy stories) meant that uncertainty claims failed to function successfully as boundary-ordering devices. However, in devising new hazard scales and
communication protocols, the scientists persisted in their expectation that the quantification of uncertainty would serve their interests by controlling public discourse. As in policy-based studies of
The NEO scientists attempted to

position themselves as authoritative purveyors of knowledge by transforming non-knowing
(indeterminacies in orbit predictions and asteroid properties, unknown social factors, etc.) into quantitative assessments of uncertainty .
scientific uncertainty, authority emerges as a key feature of the negotiation of the uncertainties of asteroid impacts.
Journalists were accepting of this transformation. News reports often reproduced the scientists uncertainty claims uncritically, as others have found of science reporting more generally (e.g.,
Nelkin, 1995). Despite their uncritical approach, the journalists managed uncertainty in different ways than did the NEO scientists. They drew on three key devices. Firstly, they recontextualized
the scientists statistical statements through juxtaposition with scenarios of future impacts. These provided the specific events required of news reports. Although the scientists presented similar
scenarios in their own popular writings (Mellor, 2007), they objected to the perceived certainty conveyed when such scenarios were attached to specific possibilities. Secondly, journalists were
able to signal uncertainty through the use of conditionals and through caveats placed low in a story. To the scientists, such unobtrusive devices were overwhelmed by the foregrounding of
possible future events. Thirdly, journalists signaled uncertainty more prominently through the use of humor and the reporting of differing predictions. The scientists interpreted these as challenges
to their authority and credibility. The different representational practices used by the scientists and journalists were grounded in different assumptions about the public audience. As Stilgoe (2007)
found, the construction of scientific authority and credibility through uncertainty claims also entails the construction of the public. When revising their representations of uncertainty, the NEO
scientists repeatedly construed the public as ignorant and easily scared. By contrast, the journalists use of humor implied that their readership would get the joke and understood that an impact
was highly unlikely. The use of humor thus assumed an audience capable of decoding ironic headlines as expressions of uncertainty. The scientists failure to acknowledge such capability on the
part of the public encouraged their own (mis)reading of humor as an assault on their credibility. The question for the media coverage of risk is not so much whether reporting emphasizes certainty
or uncertainty but how precisely the dynamic between the two is handled (cf. Stocking, 1999). The asteroid impact threat reveals the complexities of this dynamic, in terms of both the repeated
work scientists put into controlling the public representation of uncertainty, and the layered means through which journalists are able to denote both certainty and uncertainty simultaneously.
Friedman et al. (1996) have suggested that responsible journalism about risk issues should include the reporting of risk statistics and risk comparisons. The analysis presented here shows that
even if journalists do faithfully report such figures, scientists continue to complain about the media coverage. More importantly, the flawed nature of many of the scientists numerical
assessments shows that such reporting fails to provide the critical questioning one might reasonably expect of responsible journalism. This suggests that the framing of issues as amenable to
quantitative risk assessments can itself be problematic. This study shows that certainty and uncertainty are inextricably interwoven. Their coproduction is accomplished in different ways by
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Scientists use quantitative assessments, even those which are technically

inappropriate, to replace uncertainty with certainty about uncertainty (Shackley andWynne, 1996: 281,
different discursive communities.
emphasis in original). Such assessments can be developed as overt communication strategies aimed at controlling public discourse in order to assert the scientists authority and promote the
Journalists reproduce and recontextualize these assessments, reinforcing

their certainty even at the same time as they signal their speculative and uncertain nature through devices such as humor and balance. Scientists responses to these journalistic
significance of their specialism.
devices, however, can draw on assumptions about the media audience which, far from resolving the perceived problem, further entrench the discursive gap between the two communities.
2NC No Impact
Extend 1NC number three empirics prove there is no impact to an asteroid strike
multiple studies conclude that asteroids didnt cause the last extinction thats Bennett
AND, even if an asteroid is coming it wont happen for 40 MILLION YEARS - means that
you default to quick impacts
AND, more evidence variable factors prevent extinction
(Shapiro et al 10)
Irwin Shapiro (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) et al (About 20 More Authors Contributed to the Study), The National Academies,
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
2010 http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~planets/sstewart/reprints/other/4_NEOReportDefending%20Planet%20Earth%20Prepub%202010.pdf
Even were these data accurate, the determination of impact hazard would remain challenging
for the following reasons: The direct and indirect effects produced when an asteroid or comet strikes the land or ocean are only poorly understood at present; The population of our planet is
not uniformly distributed. For example, there is a higher population density near coastlines, where people may be susceptible to impact-driven tsunamis (whose damage potential is very
uncertain); Until the population of small NEOs is understood, we can only characterize impact effects of undiscovered objects statistically. As noted above, most impact simulations indicate the
likelihood that human life will be significantly affected by impacts over short timescales (i.e., under 1,000 years) is low. However, as we have not yet detected and characterized all NEOs, it is
possible (but very unlikely) that an NEO will beat the odds and devastate a city or a coastline in the near future; While actuarial studies provide an assessment of property values, and may be
used to place a value on a human life, it is very challenging to measure, for example, the value of religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political sites, as well as of entire societal entities
Beyond very crude estimates, we do

not know the size threshold for impacts that would lead to a global catastrophe and kill a
significant fraction of Earths population due to firestorms or climate change and the
associated collapse of ecosystems, agriculture, and infrastructure. There may not even be a
well-defined threshold, because global effects probably depend critically on impact location
and surface material properties (e.g., land, sea, ice sheet), season, and so on.
(such as ethnic groups, cities, and nations). These values may vary greatly across communities, regions, and nations;
AND, prefer our argument their warrents are vague predictions with no understanding of
a strike
(Shapiro et al 10)
Irwin Shapiro (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) et al (About 20 More Authors Contributed to the Study), The National Academies,
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
2010 http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~planets/sstewart/reprints/other/4_NEOReportDefending%20Planet%20Earth%20Prepub%202010.pdf
The motivation for the original Spaceguard Survey was to find all of the larger than 1-kilometer in diameter NEOs capable of striking Earth. According to Toon et al. (1997), 2- to 3-kilometerdiameter asteroid impacts may be capable of causing global damage due to the firestorm generated by infall of impact debris or indirectly by affecting the climate and producing a so-called
asteroid winter. Given the uncertainties in these calculations, Stokes et al. (2003), like other groups before them, decided to be conservative, and assumed that all objects with diameters greater
the true hazard represented by multi-kilometer

impactors is only modestly understood at present. Other than Toon et al. (1997) and a few other groups, little modeling has been
done on the worldwide environmental effects produced by such impactors other than the
one associated with the now-famous impact of a ~10 km object 65 million years ago that
than 1.5 kilometers rather than 2 to 3 km would cause a global catastrophe. Nonetheless,
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apparently resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs. More work in this area is clearly
needed.
2NC Authors Distort Data

Extend 1NC number four their authors have a PERSONAL INCENTIVE to make the
impact larger than it is causes their papers to be publish and causes an increase of their
funding
AND, prefer our evidence it cites empirics and trends in the scientific community towards
threat inflation
AND, more evidence their evidence is just for money
(Bennett 10)
The authors conclude that increasing public awareness may be the key to demands for action to deal with the impact hazard. And so for the fifteen years since the Gehrels volume was
published, those who seek public funds to deal with this rather hazy hazard have done their best to raise public awareness through various means.85 Curiously, a bracing shot of skeptical
clarity appeared in the toebreakinglyif-you-drop-it long Hazards Due to Comets & Asteroids on page 1203, which one seriously doubts one in a hundred readers ever make it to. P.R. Weissman of
their recommendations often

appear to be self-serving. Astronomers who study small bodies have advocated an
observing program that emphasizes searching for large (> 1 kilometer) Earth-crossing asteroids and comets . These are,
in general, the same objects that those astronomers are currently discovering with their existing search programs. Thus, their recommendations can be
viewed as motivated by a desire to obtain additional funding and instrumentation for their
ongoing work.86 What a world of wisdom and insight is contained in those sentences! Astronomers and engineers whose
livelihoods depend on the perception of an impact hazard develop and publish studies
concluding that there is an impact hazard. The circle goes round and round, and fills, gradually, with
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory writes: One problem for those advocating an impact hazard defense and/or detection system is that
taxpayer money. The lessons of Chicken Little, suggests Weissman, are one factor that has kept the funding of such programs from really taking off. Weissman urges his colleagues to GO
SLOW. Dont attempt to divert substantial resources to a program that, at present, is neither necessary, nor prudent.87
AND, prefer our argument empirics

(Bennett 10)
That same volume contained a paper by Andrew F. Cheng and Robert W. Farquhar of the Applied Physics Laboratory, J. Veverka of Cornell University, and C. Pilcher of NASA arguing for space
missions to NEOs in order to better determine their composition and structure.90 Going them one better were a sextet of researchers from NASA, the Russian Space Agency, and other
institutions who wrote of manned exploration of NEOs, which would, among other things, strengthen the integrity of any foreseeable program of human lunar and Mars exploration.91 The
NEO scare has many spinoffs, it seems: its missions can be even shake-down cruises for that long-delayed manned mission to Mars. The challenges of dealing with microgravity and cosmic rays,
designing effective life support, and ensuring communications across the void of space would be rehearsed in manned NEO missions in preparation for a trip to Mars. Political scientist John
Mueller, author of Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (2006), quotes a Turkish proverb If your enemy be
an ant, imagine him to be an elephant which he describes as spectacularly bad advice.92 To drastically misestimate your enemy is to badly misallocate resources. For instance, the
Department of Homeland Security announces, Todays terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon.93 This language, preposterously untrue can terrorists
really strike in Baton Rouge with an antimatter gun, or in Yankton, South Dakota, with a secret decoder ring? could easily be transferred into any scare-mongering story about killer comets or
rogue asteroids threatening the earth. Carl Sagan said that the extraordinarily remote chance that an asteroid or comet might strike Earth justified indeed, compelled a vigorous space
program. Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring not because of exploratory or
a KT like disaster is expected every 50 or 100

million years, we might be excused for asking just how imperative it is that our government
romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.94 Now, given that
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lead us into the brave new world of spacefaring. To ask this question, however, is to reveal oneself as unimaginative, dull, lacking in
foresight, perhaps troglodytic, certainly far from au courant. This is asteroid alarmism as a trick shot, as a bulked-up NEOdetection program leads to an enhanced manned space travel program. Just as professors learned
to hustle in the regime of largesse after Sputnik, in Walter A. McDougalls phrase, so did they prove fast on
their feet in tracking down killer asteroid funds.95 Warning, in grave sepulchral tones, about the end of the world does tend to concentrate
the attention of the listener. And if the Cassandra giving the warning has a Ph.D. after her name, all the better. Surely no doctor of philosophy would exaggerate in order to have a pet project
The press does its part, as it always has. Sensationalism sells, and if it isnt exactly grounded
in truth, well, wink wink, everyone knows you cant always believe what you read or hear.
funded!
***Impact Framing
1NC Our Impacts Are Legit
Prefer Short term impacts A) Intervening actorsthe longer the timeframe the more likely other agents are to solve
their impact
B) Impact accessshort timeframe impacts can turn long timeframe ones, but not the
other way aroundby the time the later event has occurred our shorter timeframe impact
will already be irreversible
C) ProbabilityLong timeframes decrease itthe more distant the prediction, the more
likely it is to be wrong
(Posner 04)
A compelling reason for not giving a great deal of thought to the remote future is the
difficulty, often the impossibility, of making accurate predictions beyond a few years. People in the
year 1000 could have had only the vaguest conception of what the world would be like in the year 2004, and we can have only the vaguest conception of what it will be like in the year 3000, let
the rate of technological change is higher

now than it was then. Lacking the requisite foreknowledge we cant know what we should
be doing now to forestall the disasters that are possible, maybe even likely, on that
timescale.
alone the year 1,000,000. We have better predictive methods than people in 1000 did, but on the other had
D) Conditional probabilityshort-timeframe existential risks effectively decrease the

probability of long-timeframe oneswe can only die once
BOSTROM 2011 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk (Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
one existential catastrophe can preempt another. If a meteor
The sum of all-things-considered probabilities of disjoint (mutually
exclusive) existential risks cannot exceed 100%. Yet conditional probabilities of disjoint existential risks (conditional, that is to say, on no other
Finally, when considering existential-risk probabilities, we must recognize that
wipes us out next year, the existential risk from future machine superintelligence drops to zero.
existential disaster occurring preemptively) could well add up to more than 100%. For example, some pessimist might coherently assign an 80% probability to humanity being destroyed by
machine superintelligence, and a 70% conditional probability to humanity being destroyed by nanotechnological warfare given that humanity is not destroyed by machine superintelligence.
if the unconditional (all-things-considered) probability of our being eradicated by superintelligence

is 80%, then the unconditional probability of our being eradicated by nanotech war must
be no greater than 20%, since we can only be eradicated once.
However,
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War is possible economics, nationalism

(Mearshimer 99)
John Mearshimer (Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago) Transcript: Is Major War Obsolete? Great Debate
Series between Professor Michael Mandelbaum and Professor John J. Mearsheimer 1999
central claim thats on the table is wrong-headed, and let me tell you why. First of all, there are a number of good reasons why great
powers in the system will think seriously about going to war in the future, and Ill give you three of them and try and illustrate
some cases. First, states oftentimes compete for economic resources . Is it hard to imagine a situation where a reconstituted
Russia gets into a war with the United States and the Persian Gulf over Gulf oil? I dont think thats implausible. Is it hard to imagine Japan and
China getting into a war in the South China Sea over economic resources? I dont find that hard to imagine. A second reason that states go to war which, of course, is dear
to the heart of realists like me, and thats to enhance their security. Take the United States out of Europe, put the Germans on their own; you got the Germans on one
Now I think the
side and the Russians on the other, and in between a huge buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it impossible to imagine the Russians and the Germans getting
into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but feasible, for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war over the South China Sea, not for resource reasons but
because Japanese sea-lines of communication run through there and a huge Chinese navy may threaten it? I dont think its impossible to imagine that. What about nationalism, a third reason?
China, fighting in the United States over Taiwan? You think thats impossible? I dont think thats impossible. Thats a scenario that makes me very nervous. I can figure out all sorts of ways,
none of which are highly likely, that the Chinese and the Americans end up shooting at each other. It doesnt necessarily have to be World War III, but it is great-power war. Chinese and Russians
fighting each other over Siberia? As many of you know, there are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. You start mixing ethnic populations in most areas of the world outside the United
States and its usually a prescription for big trouble. Again, not highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on, positing a lot of scenarios where great powers have good reasons to go to war
costs of going
to war are very high. But that doesnt mean that war is ruled out. The presence of nuclear
weapons alone does not make war obsolescent. I will remind you that from 1945 to 1990, we lived in a world where there were thousands of
against other great powers. Second reason: There is no question that in the twentieth century, certainly with nuclear weapons but even before nuclear weapons, the
nuclear weapons on both sides, and there was nobody running around saying, War is obsolescent. So you cant make the argument that the mere presence of nuclear weapons creates peace.
India and Pakistan are both going down the nuclear road. You dont hear many people running around saying, Thats going to
produce peace. And, furthermore, if you believe nuclear weapons were a great cause of peace, you ought to be in favor of nuclear proliferation. What we need is everybody to have a nuclear
weapon in their back pocket. You dont hear many people saying thats going to produce peace, do you? Conventional war? Michaels right; conventional war was very deadly before nuclear
we still had wars

. And the reason we did is because states come up with clever strategies . States are always looking for clever strategies to
weapons came along, but
avoid fighting lengthy and bloody and costly wars of attrition. And they sometimes find them, and they sometimes go to war for those reasons. So theres no question in my mind that the costs of
war are very high, and deterrence is not that difficult to achieve in lots of great-power security situations. But on the other hand, to argue that war is obsolescent-I wouldnt make that argument.
My third and final point here is, the fact of the matter is, that theres hardly anybody in the national security establishment-and I bet this is true of Michael-who believes that war is obsolescent.
Im going to tell you why I think this is the case. Consider the fact that the United States stations roughly 100,000 troops in Europe and 100,000 troops in Asia. We spend an enormous amount of
money on defense. Were spending almost as much money as we were spending during the Cold War on defense. We spend more money than the next six countries in the world spend on defense.
The questions is, why are we spending all this money? Why are we stationing troops in Europe? Why are we stationing troops in Asia? Why are we concentrating on keeping NATO intact and
we believe that if we dont stay there and we pull out, trouble is going to break
out, and not trouble between minor powers, but trouble between major powers. Thats why were there. We know very well that if we leave Europe, the Germans are
spreading it eastward? Ill tell you why, because
going to seriously countenance, if not automatically go, and get nuclear weapons. Certainly the case with the Japanese. Do you think the Germans and the Japanese are going to stand for long not
to have nuclear weapons? I dont think thats the case. Again, that security zone between the Germans and the Russians-therell be a real competition to fill that. The reason were there in Europe,
and the reason that were there in Asia is because we believe that great-power war is a potential possibility, which contradicts the argument on the table. So I would conclude by asking Michael
if, number one, he believes we should pull out of Europe and pull out of Asia, and number two, if he does not, why not?
Prefer our evidencethe majority of experts think major power war is still likely.
(Mearshimer 99)
John Mearshimer (Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago) Transcript: Is Major War Obsolete? Great Debate
Series between Professor Michael Mandelbaum and Professor John J. Mearsheimer 1999
hardly anybody in the national security establishment-and I bet this is true of Michael-who believes
that war is obsolescent. Im going to tell you why I think this is the case. Consider the fact that the United States stations roughly 100,000 troops
in Europe and 100,000 troops in Asia. We spend an enormous amount of money on defense. Were spending
almost as much money as we were spending during the Cold War on defense. We spend more money than the next six countries in
the world spend on defense. The questions is, why are we spending all this money? Why are we stationing troops in Europe? Why are we
stationing troops in Asia? Why are we concentrating on keeping NATO intact and spreading it eastward? Ill tell you why, because we believe that if we
dont stay there and we pull out, trouble is going to break out, and not trouble between minor powers, but
trouble between major powers. Thats why were there. We know very well that if we leave Europe, the Germans are going to seriously countenance, if not
My third and final point here is, the fact of the matter is, that theres
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automatically go, and get nuclear weapons. Certainly the case with the Japanese. Do you think the Germans and the Japanese are going to stand for long not to have nuclear weapons? I dont
think thats the case. Again, that security zone between the Germans and the Russians-therell be a real competition to fill that. The reason were there in Europe, and the reason that were there
in Asia is because we believe that great-power war is a potential possibility, which contradicts the argument on the table. So I would conclude by asking Michael if, number one, he believes we
should pull out of Europe and pull out of Asia, and number two, if he does not, why not?
Obsolescence of major war is impossiblestates inevitably slip into conflicts

(Doran 99)
Charles Doran (Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies) Survival, Is Major War Obsolete? An
Exchange: The Structural Turbulence of International Affairs, June, vol.41 no.2, p.139-142 1999
Finally, of course, it is important to be clear about the meaning of the word at the heart of this argument. 'Obsolescence', in this context, can have two meanings. One is that something falls out of
major war was never

in fashion. I do not believe that any government since the beginning of the nineteenth century, has purposely sought
a major war. Rather, they have slipped into major wars. They may well have been interested in fighting wars, especially if such
wars were thought to be quick and not very destructive, or only destructive for the other side. But they did not expect these wars to develop into
the kind that took place in the Napoleonic period, or the First and Second World Wars. That leaves the second definition, 'disuse'. Therefore the
burden of the argument has to be that major wars are no longer going to happen. And that
is a faith that is very difficult to maintain.
fashion. The other is that it is no longer in use. The former definition applies, perhaps, to war in general. But it does not apply to major war, because
1NC AT: Mandelbaum War Not Possible

Mandelbaum concedes
(Mandelbaum 99)
Michael Mandelbaum (American Foreign Policy Professor in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins) Council on Foreign
Relations Great Debate Series, Is Major War Obsolete? 1999
Im not saying that weve reached the end of all conflict, violence or war; indeed,
Nor am I suggesting that we have reached the end
of modern, as distinct from major, war; modern war involving mechanized weapons, formal battles, and professional troops. Nor am I offering a single-factor explanation. Its not
In conclusion, let me say what Im not arguing.
the peace Ive identified at the core of the international system has made conflict on the periphery more likely.
simply nuclear weapons or just democracy or only a growing aversion to war. Its not a single thing; its everything: values, ideas, institutions, and historical experience. Nor, I should say, do I
Peace does not keep itself
believe that peace is automatic.

. But what I think we may be able to secure is more than the peace of the Cold War based on deterrence. The
political scientist Carl Deutcsh once defined a security community as something where warlessness becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, he was referring to the North Atlantic community,
which was bound tightly together because of the Cold War. But to the extent that my argument is right, all of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region will become, slowly, haltingly but increasingly,
like that.
1NC Their Impacts Arent Legit

Our Disad happens faster than an asteroid strike means its die or die for the neg the
only NEOs we could be able to deflect would be ones that are coming in no less than 50
years
Try or die is stupid A. Supervolcanoes
(Britt 05)
Robert Roy Britt (Livescience Senior Writer) MSNBC Super volcanoes will chill the world someday, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7129908/, 3/8/2005 2005
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The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet and threaten human
civilization, British scientists warned Tuesday. And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it. Several volcanoes around the
world are capable of gigantic eruptions unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on geologic evidence of past events, the scientists said.
Such eruptions would dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything else going back dozens of millennia. "Super eruptions are up to hundreds of times larger than these,"
said Stephen Self of Britain's Open University. "An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years following
the eruption," Self said. "They could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies, and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to threaten
the fabric of civilization
B. Sun death
(Matheny 07)
Jason G Matheny (Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) Reducing the Risk of Human
Extinction, Risk Analysis 2007; 27(5): 1335-1344, http://jgmatheny.org/matheny_extinction_risk.htm
As for astronomical risks, to escape our sun's death, humanity will eventually need to
relocate. If we survive the next century, we are likely to build self-sufficient colonies in space. We would be motivated by self-interest to do so, as asteroids, moons, and planets have
valuable resources to mine, and the technological requirements for colonization are not beyond imagination (Kargel, 1994 ; Lewis, 1996 ).
C. Entropy
(Matheny 09)
Jason G Matheny (Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) Ought we worry
about human extinction? 2009, 3-14-09, http://jgmatheny.org/extinctionethics.htm
Given the (probably) improbable position we find ourselves in, as a species with both the technological potential and the motivation to delay extinction, it would be imprudent to trust another
Earth will be exposed to

astronomical risks, and entropy will have consumed resources that could otherwise have
supported sentient life (Bostrom, 2003).
species will evolve and possess the same. Moreover, it would take many millions of years for such a species to evolve. During that time,
Proves any risk logic would make all decisionmaking impossible. Its also a DA to the aff
trying to avoid the asteroid would make mitigation measures for the larger magnitude
impacts I just read LESS likely
(Meskill 09)
David Meskill ( professor at Colorado School of Mines and PhD from Harvard) The "One Percent Doctrine" and
Environmental Faith, Dec 9 2009, http://davidmeskill.blogspot.com/2009/12/one-percent-doctrine-and-environmental.html
Tom Friedman's piece today in the Times on the environment (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html?_r=1) is one of the flimsiest pieces by a major columnist that I can
one percent doctrine" (which is similar to the environmentalists' "precautionary principle") to the risk of environmental
armageddon. But this doctrine is both intellectually incoherent and practically irrelevant. It is intellectually incoherent because it cannot be
applied consistently in a world with many potential disaster scenarios. In addition to the global-warming
risk, there's also the asteroid-hitting-the-earth risk, the terrorists-with-nuclear-weapons risk (Cheney's original scenario), the super-duper-pandemic risk, etc. Since
each of these risks, on the "one percent doctrine," would deserve all of our attention, we cannot address all
of them simultaneously. That is, even within the one-percent mentality, we'd have to begin prioritizing, making choices and trade-offs. But why then
should we only make these trade-offs between responses to disaster scenarios? Why not also choose between them and other, much more cotidien, things we value? Why treat the
unlikely but cataclysmic event as somehow fundamentally different, something that cannot be integrated into all the other calculations we
make? And in fact, this is how we behave all the time. We get into our cars in order to buy a cup of coffee, even though there's some
chance we will be killed on the way to the coffee shop. We are constantly risking death, if slightly, in order to pursue the things we
value. Any creature that adopted the "precautionary principle" would sit at home - no, not even there, since there is some
chance the building might collapse. That creature would neither be able to act, nor not act, since it would nowhere discover perfect safety. Friedman's approach reminds
remember ever reading. He applies Cheney's "
me somehow of Pascal's wager - quasi-religious faith masquerading as rational deliberation (as Hans Albert has pointed out, Pascal's wager itself doesn't add up: there may be a God, in fact, but it
may turn out that He dislikes, and even damns, people who believe in him because they've calculated it's in their best interest to do so). As my friend James points out, it's striking how
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descriptions of the environmental risk always describe the situation as if it were five to midnight. It must be near midnight, since otherwise there would be no need to act. But it can never be five
*past* midnight, since then acting would be pointless and we might as well party like it was 2099. Many religious movements - for example the early Jesus movement - have exhibited precisely
this combination of traits: the looming apocalypse, with the time (just barely) to take action.
Try or die for the neg nuclear war outweighs comparative evidence
(Bennett 10)
there is no known incident of a major crater-forming impact in recorded human
history, argues P.R. Weissman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and since the credibility of the impact hazard is justifiably low with the
public and governmental decision-makers, we ought to defer the development of a defensive system until such time as
technological advances permit us to do so at a reasonable cost.55 There is also, he points out at the risk of being called chauvinist, no doubt, by
Given that
the more feverish Earth-savers the pragmatic and/or parochial fact that the United States accounts for 6.4 percent of the total land mass of the Earth, and only 1.9 percent of the total area,
anything short of a civilization-ending asteroid would be exceedingly unlikely to

hit the U.S. By contrast, such threats as infectious diseases and nuclear war present a more real and immediate danger
including water.56 Thus
to Americans, and to earthlings in general. Perhaps money would be better spent addressing those matters?
2NC Nuclear War First

Nuclear war outweighs asteroids our model of risk calculus is better
(Hellman 8)
Martin Hellman (professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford, PhD, his work is endorsed by a former Director of the National Security
Agency, Stanford's President Emeritus, and two Nobel Laureates) Spring 2008 Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence, http://nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf)
A full-scale nuclear war is not the only threat to humanitys continued existence, and we should allocate resources commensurate with the various risks. A large
NEO (near earth

failure rate
asteroid colliding with the Earth could destroy humanity in the same way it is believed the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. Such
object) extinction events have a failure rate on the order of 10 -8 per year [Chapman & Morrison 1994]. During one century, that
corresponds to one chance in a million of humanity being destroyed. While 10 -6 is a small probability, the
associated cost is so highinfinite from our perspectivethat some might argue that a century is too long a delay before working to reduce the threat. Fortunately,
significant threat reduction has recently occurred. Over the last 20 years, NASAs Spaceguard effort is believed to have found all such potentially hazardous large
asteroids, and none is predicted to strike Earth within the next century. With a hundred-year safety window in place, resolution of later potential impacts can be
deferred for a few decades until our technology is significantly enhanced. Comets also pose a threat, and their more eccentric orbits make them harder to catalog, but
their lower frequency of Earth impact makes the associated risk acceptable for a limited period of time. Using similar reasoning, if the failure rate of nuclear
deterrence is 10 -6 per year, waiting a decade to reduce the threat might be acceptable, resulting in a 10 -5 probability of a failure, although good engineering practice
the failure rate of deterrence is an order of magnitude higher, 10 -5 per year, then the
risk is increased proportionately, and it is difficult to tolerate even a decades delay in
solving the problem. Considering the next hypothetical failure rate of 10 -4 per year, the probability of humanity destroying itself during a decade-long
8 might disagree. If
effort would be one-in-a-thousand, which is much too large. If the failure rate is 10 -3 per year, 9 the probability increases to approximately 1% over a decade and
10% over a century, and delay is clearly unacceptable. At that level of failure rate, a significant reduction would be required within a matter of years. If the failure rate
of nuclear deterrence is closer to my order of magnitude estimate of 1% per year, then anything short of an all-out effort to change course would be criminally
Each year that we delay in reducing the risk brings with it a 1% chance of disaster,
and a decades delay entails roughly a 10% chance. While additional research is warranted to better estimate the failure rate
of nuclear deterrence, I hope that readers will agree that the evidence presented thus far makes it difficult to support
an estimated rate of 10 -5 per year or less. In that case, we must immediately start work to reduce
the risk of a failure of nuclear deterrence and not stop until it reaches an acceptable level.
negligent.
2NC Our Impacts Are Legit

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First, prefer our impacts on TIMEFRAME

a. extend intervening actors long timeframes open up a world of possibility other actors
or EVEN NASA are likely to solve the impact means action now is not necessary because
they cant predict the future
AND, cross apply the solvency debate here any propensity the status quo could solve
eventually supercharges this means acting now is irrelevant to the earths safety
b. Impact access our short term impacts TURN THE CASE star this argument war
breaks down institutions and diverts funds from other agencies means our war overrides
any solvency
c. probability their long timeframes make the probability next to ZERO sure they can
make predictions but they are just predictions because they are SO FAR into the future
means that they are more likely wrong thats Posner
AND, their impact calc is a shame over long enough time period ANYTHING is possible
means you prefer the ones that you can directly prevent
d. conditional probability our short timeframe impacts short circuit existential risks you
can only die once meaning timeframe is a key issue in this round thats Bostrom
Second, prefer our impacts on PROBABLITY
Extend the Mearshimer 99 evidence he gives two key warrants
a. economics competition for resources can still happen causes abrasiveness and allows
for 21st century war
b. nationalism states dont regard nuclear weapons as a deterrent security reasons
mean they escalate a war
Extend the second piece of Mearshimer evidence experts are on our side and conclude
neg major power war is still likely
Extend the Doran evidence war is always a possibility - their authors miss the boat no
state wants a war it is a matter of SLIPPING into conflict their authors dont assume
quick escalation that inevitably takes place
AND, prefer our argument EMPRICS PROVE that despite no war rhetoric it always
happens AND their arguments dont apply to China or Russia
(Kagan 99)
Kagan 1999
Donald Kagan is Hilihouse Professor of History and Classics at Yale University Is Major War Obsolete? An Exchange Survival, vol. 41, no. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 13952
I agree that the present moment in history provides a better chance than ever for achieving a long period of peace, that the deterrent offered by nuclear weapons works towards that end, and that
the growth of trade, democracy and economic interdependence assists that prospect. I do not, however, believe that war is obsolete not yet, anyway. Nor do I believe that the present situation
the chances for peace in the future depend on the decisions and the
actions taken by people and these, as always, provide no guarantee against war even major war as
Michael Mandelbaum has defined it. This is not the first time in history that people have thought that they had arrived at such a moment, such an extraordinary turning point. In 29BC,
is unique in history any more than any moment is. As always,
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Augustus closed the doors of the Temple of Janus in Rome for only the third time in the 500 years of Romes history, as a
demonstration, a propaganda move, but also as a statement of a real expectation that new conditions had arrived
that made peace appear to be a lasting peace. He turned out to be wrong. A more interesting year, perhaps, is 1792: a
wonderful year for people to be stunningly optimistic about the prospects for the future. William Pitt the Younger, then Prime Minister of England, predicted that there
were going to be at least 15 years of peace; never had the horizon looked clearer. And in the same year, two intellectuals of
different sorts, Joseph Priestley and Tom Paine, had expectations of the same kind . In fact, they were less limited and more like the
when
optimistic views that Michael Mandelbaum puts forward in his article. They based their future on a major change of conditions in the world. Priestley said: The present commercial treaties
between England and France and between other nations, formerly hostile to each other, seem to show that mankind begin to be sensible to the folly of war and promise a new and important era in
the state of the world in general, at least in Europe. Paine said: If commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable, it would extirpate the system of war. And of course, to this
view were added the views of Kant and Montesquieu, who thought that the establishment of the political institution of the republic was going to have the same pacifying effect. Monarchies were
really what war was about. Now that they were gone, there would be no more war. As Paine put it:2 The instant the form of government was changed in France, the republican principles of peace
within a year,
France and England were at war, and 20 years or so of terrible, dreadful conflict followed. In 1848, John Stuart Mill also sang the praises of
and domestic prosperity and economy arose with the new government, and the same consequences would follow in the case of other nations. Of course,
commerce:3 Commerce, which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which act in natural opposition to it . The great extent and rapid increase
of international trade ... [is] the principal guarantee of the peace of the world. And then, of course, at the end of the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century, two people of note wrote
Angells famous work, The

message was that war had become so devastating from an economic point of
view that nobody would ever fight. The only problem in Angells view was to teach people enough to know war was a disaster. Ivan Bloch was the
other one, who said that war was so horrible in his day because the incredible means that had become available for fighting meant that no society could survive very long if they ever
started such a war. The horror and danger of future war, he felt, would deter these conflicts. Well, of course, within a
few years came the First World War. Now having said all this, even if all these men were wrong, this does not mean that Michael Mandelbaum
cannot be right. But it should inspire some degree of modesty and caution . In fact Mandelbaum is very cautious in the language that he
important statements of this thesis. One had a great impact; the other was not much noticed but was perhaps the more perceptive. The former was Norman
Great Illusion. Basically, his
uses. Major war is not necessarily finished, he concedes. Its not dead, its obsolete. This is a charming term that seems to say more than it does, because that allows Mandelbaum to draw back
from the more total claims later on. A major war is unlikely but not unthinkable, which is to say he thinks it can happen. It is obsolete, he writes, in the sense that it is no longer fashionable. To
pick up the metaphor is to see some of its limitations as well as its charm. Is war really a matter of fashion? And even if it is, dont we have to face the fact that there are some people who choose
China and Russia are two cases to which the writer points. He
identifies the Taiwan Straits and the Russo-Ukrainian border as places where wars may well break out, should they erupt anywhere. They are the potential
Sarajevos of the twenty-first century. He is right. And, of course, it is this concession, however genuinely and generously and modestly expressed, that gives away the
game. Since there are at least two places where major wars between great powers might
well break out even today and two are quite enough it seems to me that his entire thesis is undermined.
to be unfashionable, and then there are other people who have never heard of fashion in the first place?
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2NC CHINA Impacts Are Legit

Multiple scenarios for china conflict military spending
(Kaplan 05)
Robert Kaplan (Atlantic correspondent and the author of several books about the armed forces) June 2005 How We Would Fight China, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200506/kaplan
The relative shift in focus from the Middle East to the Pacific in coming yearsidealistic rhetoric notwithstandingwill force the next American president, no matter what his or her party, to
adopt a foreign policy similar to those of moderate Republican presidents such as George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon. The management of risk will become a governing
ideology. Even if Iraq turns out to be a democratic success story, it will surely be a from-the-jaws-of-failure success that no one in the military or the diplomatic establishment will ever want to
repeatespecially in Asia, where the economic repercussions of a messy military adventure would be enormous. "
Getting into a war with China is
easy," says Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret who developed the weapons strategy for the Afghan resistance in the 1980s as a CIA officer and is now at the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, in Washington. "You can see many scenarios, not just Taiwanespecially as the Chinese
develop a submarine and missile capability throughout the Pacific. But the dilemma is, How do you end a war with
China?" Like the nations involved in World War I, and unlike the rogue states everyone has been concentrating on, the United States and China in the twentyfirst century would have the capacity to keep fighting even if one or the other lost a big battle or a
missile exchange. This has far-reaching implications. "Ending a war with China," Vickers says, "may mean effecting some form of regime change, because we don't want to
leave some wounded, angry regime in place." Another analyst, this one inside the Pentagon, told me, "Ending a war with China will force us to substantially reduce their military capacity, thus
threatening their energy sources and the Communist Party's grip on power. The world will not be the same afterward. It's a very dangerous road to travel on." The better road is for PACOM to
deter China in Bismarckian fashion, from a geographic hub of comparative isolationthe Hawaiian Islandswith spokes reaching out to major allies such as Japan, South Korea, Thailand,
Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and India. These countries, in turn, would form secondary hubs to help us manage the Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian archipelagoes, among other
places, and also the Indian Ocean. The point of this arrangement would be to dissuade China so subtly that over time the rising behemoth would be drawn into the PACOM alliance system
China will spend more and

more money on its military in the coming decades. Our only realistic goal may be to encourage it to make investments that are defensive, not offensive, in nature.
without any large-scale conflagrationthe way NATO was ultimately able to neutralize the Soviet Union. Whatever we say or do,
Our efforts will require particular care, because China, unlike the Soviet Union of old (or Russia today, for that matter), boasts soft as well as hard power. Businesspeople love the idea of China;
you don't have to beg them to invest there, as you do in Africa and so many other places. China's mixture of traditional authoritarianism and market economics has broad cultural appeal
throughout Asia and other parts of the world. And because China is improving the material well-being of hundreds of millions of its citizens, the plight of its dissidents does not have quite the
same market allure as did the plight of the Soviet Union's Sakharovs and Sharanskys. Democracy is attractive in places where tyranny has been obvious, odious, and unsuccessful, of course, as in
Ukraine and Zimbabwe. But the world is full of gray areasJordan and Malaysia, for examplewhere elements of tyranny have ensured stability and growth.
Our scenario is uniquely key to solve conflict policy is the only way to solve war
(Zakaria 08)
Fareed Zakaria January 7 2008 The Rise of a Fierce yet Fragile Superpower, Newsweek
China's sense of its own weakness casts a shadow over its foreign policy. It is unique as a world power, the first in modern history to be at once rich (in aggregate terms) and poor (in per capita
terms). It still sees itself as a developing country, with hundreds of millions of peasants to worry about. It views many of the issues on which it is pressed--global warming, human rights--as richcountry problems. (When it comes to pushing regimes to open up, Beijing also worries about the implications for its own undemocratic structure.) But this is changing. From North Korea to
scholars and policy

intellectuals (and a few generals in the Pentagon) look at the rise of China and see the seeds of inevitable greatpower conflict and perhaps even war. Look at history, they say. When a new power rises it inevitably disturbs
the balance of power, unsettles the international order and seeks a place in the sun. This makes it bump up against the established great power of the day (that would be
us). So, Sino-U.S. conflict is inevitable. But some great powers have been like Nazi Germany and others like modern-day Germany and
Japan. The United States moved up the global totem pole and replaced Britain as the No. 1 country without a war between the two nations. Conflict and competition--particularly in the
economic realm--between China and the United States is inevitable. But whether this turns ugly depends largely on policy choices
that will be made in Washington and Beijing over the next decade. In another Foreign Affairs essay, Princeton's John Ikenberry makes the
Darfur to Iran, China has been slowly showing that it wants to be a responsible "stakeholder" in the international system. Some
crucially important point that the current world order is extremely conducive to China's peaceful rise. That order, he argues, is integrated, rule-based, with wide and deep foundations--and
there are massive economic benefits for China to work within this system. Meanwhile, nuclear
weapons make it suicidal to risk a great-power war. "Today's Western order, in short, is hard to overturn and easy to join," writes
Ikenberry. The Chinese show many signs of understanding these conditions. Their chief strategist, Zheng Bijian, coined the term "peaceful rise" to describe just such an effort on Beijing's part to
enter into the existing order rather than overturn it. The Chinese government has tried to educate its public on these issues, releasing a 12-part documentary last year, "The Rise of Great Nations,"
while the conditions exist for peace and

there are also many factors pointing in the other direction.
whose central lesson is that markets and not empire determine the long-run success of a great global power. But
cooperation,
As China grows in strength, it grows in pride and
nationalist feeling--which will be on full display at the Summer Olympic Games. Beijing's mandarin class is convinced that the United States wishes it ill. Washington, meanwhile--sitting atop a
unipolar order--is unused to the idea of sharing power or accommodating another great power's interests. Flashpoints like human rights, Taiwan or some unforeseen incident could spiral badly in
an atmosphere of mistrust and with domestic constituencies--on both sides--eager to sound tough. Two thousand eight is the year of China. It should also be the year we craft a serious long-term
China policy.
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2NC Their Impacts Arent Legit

Their impacts rely on inevitability which is flawed multiple inevitable scenarios will
cause extinction means you prefer short term impacts that are avoidable
a. supervolcanoes they inevitably cause extinction only a matter of time before one
erupts and destroys the biosphere resulting in extinction thats Britt
b. The Sun as it ages it gets larger increases its gravitational pull and pulls the earth in
causes inevitable extinction thats Matheny
c. entropy the earth will just run out of resources means we cant sustain life on the
earth in any form thats Matheny
AND, their any risk logic kills decision making impossible it cant be applied to a world
where multiple scenarios for extinction can happen means at the very least you evaluate
each impact equally and default to timeframe thats Meskill
AND, prefer nuclear war impacts we have comparative evidence on this issue there is no
history of any asteroid strike powerful enough to kill the earth nuclear war should be
preferred because the probability is substantially higher
***AT: Other Advantages

AT Accidents/Miscalc Impacts
Misinterpretation or accidents wont lead to nuclear exchange their evidence ignores the
role of decision makers, none would just launch on warning
(Quinlan 09)
Michael Quinlan (Consulting Senior Fellow for South Asia International Institute for Strategic Studies) Thinking About Nuclear
Weapons, 2009 amazon
Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial
In none of these Instances, it Is

did matters get at all near to nuclear launchextraordinary good fortune again. critics have suggested. But the rival and more logical
inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of experience presents Itself once more: that the probability of initial misinterpretation
leading far towards mistaken launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear-weapon
possessor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release sequences have many steps, and
human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To convey that
because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war
is wild hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that he was nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers
steps in alert sequences for US nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by indicators mistaken or misconstrued.
accepted,
any ready example of major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-magn itude increaw In caution. It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might
be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potennal adversay). No such launch is known to have occurred
In over sixty years. The probability of it is thcrcfore very low. But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of its initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real
situation of decision-niakers, as pages 64 have brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated In this way belongs to science fiction. one special form of
miscalculation appeared sporadically in the speculations of academic commentators, though it was scarcely ever to be encounteredat least so far as my own observation wentin the utterances
of practical planners within government. This is the idea that nuclear war might be erroneously triggered, or erroneously widened, through a state under attack misreading either what sort of
attack it was lwing subjected to, or where the attack came from. One special form of miscalculation appeared sporadically in the speculations of academic commentators, though it was scarcely
ever to be encounteredat least so far as my own observation wentin the utterances of practical planners within government. This is the idea that nuclear war might be erroneously triggered,
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or erroneously widened, through a state under attack misreading either what sort of attack It was being subjected to, or where the attack came from. The postulated misreading of the nature of the
attack referred in particular to the hypothesis that if a delivery systemnormally a missilethat was known to he capable of carrying either a nuclear or a conventional warhead was launched in
a conventional role, the target country might, on detecting the launch through its early. warning systems, misconstrue the mission as an imminent nuclear strike and immediately unleash a nuclear
counter-strike of its own. This conecture was voiced, for example, as a criticism of the pro- lls (or giving the US Trident SL11M long associated with nuclear missions, a capability to deliver
conventional warheads. Whatever the nwrit of those proposals (it Is not explored here),
It is hard to regard this particular apprehension as having any real-
credibility
life
. The flight time of a ballistic missile would not exceed about thirty minutes, and that of a cruise missile a few hours, before arrival on target made its character
conventional or nuclearunmistakable. No government will need, and no non- lunatic government could wish, to take within so short a span of time a step as enormous and irrevocable as the
execution of a nuclear strike on the basis of early-warning Information alone without knowing the true nature of the incoming attack. The speculation tends moreover to be expressed without
reference either to any realistic political or conflict-related context thought to render the episode plausible, or to the manifest interest of the launching country, should there be any risk of doubt, in
ensuringby explicit communication if necessarythat there was no misinterpretation of its conventionally armed launch. It may he oblected to this analysis that in the cold war the two
opposing supcrpowcrs had concepts of launch-on-warning. That seems to be true, at least in the sense that successive US administrations declined to rule out such an option and indeed included
In their contingency plans Lxth this and the possibility of launch- under-attack (that is launch after some strikes had been suffered and while the sequence of them was evidently continuing). The
Soviet Union was not likely to have had more relaxed practices. But the colossal gravity of activating any such arrangements must always have been recognized. It could have been contemplated
only in circumstances where the entire political context made a pre-emptive attack by the adversary plainly a serious and imminent possibility. and where niowover the available information
unmistakably mdi- cated that a massive assault with hundreds or thousands of missiles was on the way. That was a scenario wholly unlike that implicit in the supposition that a conventional
missile attack might he briefly mIstaken for a nuclear one. The other sort of misunderstanding conjecturedthat of misreading the source of attackenvisaged. typically. that SLBMs launched
by France or the United Kingdom might erroneously be supposed to be coming from US submarines, and so might initiate a superpower exchange which the United States did not in fact intend.
(An occasional variant on this was the notion that triggering in this way might actually be an element in deliberate French or IlK deterrent concepts. There was never any truth in this guess in
relation to the United Kingdom, and French thinking Is unlikely to have been different.) The unreality In this category of conlecture lay In the Implication that such a scenario could develop
without the US government making the most determined efforts to ensure that Soviet (or now Rus.sian leaders knew that the United States was not responsible for the attack, and with those
leaders for their part resorting, on unproven suspicion. to action that was virtually certain to provoke nuclear counter-action from the United States. There used occasionally to be another
speculation, that if the Soviet Union suffered heavy nuclear strikes known to come from France or the United Kingdom, it might judge its interests to be best wrvcd by ensuring that the United
States did not remain an unscathed bystander. But even if that were somehow thought marginally less implausible, it would have been a different matter from misinterpretauon of the initial strike.
As was nOted earlier In this chapter, the arrangements under which nudear-weapon inventories arc now managed rc in several iniportant respects already mudi less open to concern than they
were during much of the cold war. Worries voiced more recently sometimes relate to cyher-attack----hostile Interference, whether by states or by other actors such as terrorists, with Information
systems used in the control of armouries. It is highly unlikely, though details are (again understandably) not made public, that regular reviews of control arrangements are oblivious to any such
risks. Perceptions of them do however reinforce the already-strong case that whatever arrange. ments still remain in place for continuous high readiness to launch nuclear action at short notice
should be abandoned. Chapter 13 returns to this.
Not confused with nuclear use airbursts from asteroids happen at a completely different
altitude than nuclear weapons also would have a different explosion signature
AT Small Asteroids
Cant solve them
(Lewis 96)
John Lewis (Professor of Planetary Science at University of Arizona) Rain of Iron and Ice 1996
About a quarter of the total hazard is due to megaton-yield (25-meter diameter) asteroids that make airbursts at low altitudes. About once per century a megaton explosion will occur over a
populated land area. The average expected death rate from airburst ignition of fires, ballistic projection of window glass, and blast-wave-induced structural failure is about one thousand people
per year. Most of these fatalities (several hundred thousand) will occur in the single worst event of the millennium. There are about 20 million bodies in near-Earth orbits that have megaton
impact energies. About 4 percent of the bodies in this population are physically strong irons, stony-irons, or achondrites that are capable of penetrating to the surface and excavating craters if
their entry velocity is not too high. Most of these crater-forming small bodies are irons. At the opposite extreme, most of the 20 million bodies are probably structurally weak, similar to
carbonaceous asteroids or cometary debris, prone to explosion at altitudes above 30 kilometers. Such explosions can be spectacular, but are not a threat to Earth's surface. The remaining 40
percent or so of the population of 25-meter bodies consists of moderate-strength chondritic asteroidal material. Slow-moving ordinary chondrite material can penetrate deep enough into the
These Tunguska-type bodies present a peculiar problem: the danger

presented by them is not so easily anticipated because of the vast number of bodies in this
size range that must be discovered and tracked. There are ten thousand times as many Tunguska-class (25-meter) bodies as there are
kilometer-class global killers. They are so faint that they are not easy to detect . Not only are they sixteen hundred times smaller in crossatmosphere to be a serious threat at the surface.
section area than the kilometer-size bodies, but there is the serious possibility that they are, on average, darker than their larger cousins. Fortunately, the ones that are hardest to find (the very dark
the cost of a telescope

system sensitive enough to detect these bodies and extensive enough to find 20 million of
them boggles the mind. Instead of the roughly 150 telescopes needed to find and track our 250-meter bodies, we would need 1.5 million
telescopes {each of them superior in sensitivity, size, and cost) to find and track the 25-meter bodies. Instead of a few hundred million
dollars for the entire operation, we would require an annual budget of several hundred
billion dollars, comparable to the Department of Defense budget. This is not remotely feasible. The cost per life saved escalates to tens of millions
carbonaceous and cometary bodies) also so weak that they present a negligible threat to Earth's surface lace. Because of these factors,
of dollars per person. Clearly, political entities in the modern world do not attach anywhere near this value to the average human life. At this price, the cost of an insurance policy is prohibitive.
Besides, Tunguskas are local, not global, in their effects. They do not present a hazard to civilization or to humanity, only to a single region of a thousand or so square kilometers.
No impact to small asteroid strike
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(Dore 07)
Mohammed Dore (Climate Change Laboratory, Brock University) Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An
Interdisciplinary Approach 2007
NEO) of say 3035 meters diameter
hits a populated area. It knocks out power for a few days and disrupts transportation of goods. This would be comparable to an average disaster causing less than $ 5
billion in damage costs. Most such disasters are below the FEMA threshold , and are handled by public assistance at the State level and by
private insurance. The typical death toll may be between ten and one hundred . At the high end in this scenario may be
something such as the 1989 San Francisco earthquake that killed 63 people, injured 3 757 and led to property damage of $ 5.9 billion. At this scale, recovery and return
to some semblance of normality could take two weeks to a month to resettle people, and perhaps six months to rebuild damaged
With the NOAA classification of natural disasters, we now construct six scenarios, in order of increasing severity. A Near Earth Object (
infrastructure. If this NEO struck a developing country, the damage costs might be lower, but the death toll higher; and there might be outbreaks of disease due to a fragile water and sanitation
infrastructure. For example, the Bangladesh floods of 1998 cost $ 3 billion, but affected thirty million people. A NEO impact that damaged food production in a rural area of a developing country
through collateral damage (e.g. impact on dams resulting in flooding), could cause severe hardship. These same Bangladesh floods of 1998 led to a food deficit of 2.2 million tonnes of rice, or
7% of the countrys output. In contrast, flooding in the Midwestern US in 1993 caused forty-eight deaths and damage of $ 27 billion.
No risk of small asteroid - only happen every 1,000 years

(MacCracken 07)
Michael C., fellow at the Climate Institute, Ch. 16: The Climatic Effects of Asteroid and Comet Impacts: Consequences for an Increasingly Interconnected Society, in Comet/Asteroid Impacts
and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, SpringLink)
objects with diameters of
50[m]
Depending on an impactors composition and the speed and angle of impact,

up to roughly
to 100 m typically create blast
effects of up to of order 50 to 100 MT without impacting the surface. The Tunguska event of 30 June 1908, for example, created a shock wave that leveled the forest over an area of roughly 2000
km2 (Kolesnikov et al. 2007). This event is variously estimated to have resulted from an atmospheric explosion of 10 to 100 MT from an object estimated to be between about 60 and 100 m in
are statistically expected to occur approximately every few centuries,

with an event occurring over land roughly every 500 to 1000 years, which is not inconsistent with historical records.
diameter (Covey 2002; Yazev 2002). Based on astronomical evidence, such events
Small asteroid strike does not cause extinction

(Binzel and Thomas 09)
Richard, prof of planetary science at MIT and author of leading reference book on asteroids, & Cristina, graduate student, Space Topics: Near Earth Objects, Sizing Up the Threat,
http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/near_earth_objects/threat.html
a Tunguska-like or larger
event over a major city would be an unprecedented human disaster, the consequences to the worldwide ecosystem and
climate would be minimal. Assuming that the cosmic impact is not misinterpreted as a hostile nuclear attack set in motion by a real or imagined enemy, the
remaining civilizations of the world would presumably remain stable and would be able to supply
aid and comfort to the afflicted area.
What distinguishes "local" impacts from "global" impacts are the responses of Earth's ecosystem and inhabitants. While the occurrence of
Low probability of a small asteroid strike hitting a populated area

(Sidle 07)
Roy, Slope Conservation Section, Geohazards Division, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Chapter 23: Hazard Risk Assessment of a Near Earth Object, in Comet/Asteroid
Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, SpringLink
If this size of asteroid struck a major urban area, widespread property damage would occur and many lives would be lost (Tate 2000;
Chapman 2004); however, such an impact would be very improbable . A recent analog for such an impact on uninhabited land is the 1908 Tunguska
event in Siberia where a forested area of 1 300 km2 was completely destroyed by the blast and collision of a 60 m asteroid with damage extending outwards an additional 3 800 km2
The estimated probability of a 100 m asteroid striking a city is 1.4 x 108;
(Morrison 1992).
the probability of
striking some inhabited area is more than 4 orders of magnitude higher, but such an impact may kill as many as 3 million people (Garshnek et al. 2000). For this size of asteroid, a 12 km crater
would be produced if the impact occurred on land and ejected material would be spread up to a 10 km radius. Given present capabilities it is not possible to detect most of these relatively smaller
NEOs (Chapman 2004). The defining characteristics of Level 2 NEOs are their modest frequency of occurrence, relatively local but potentially acute damages, and unpredictability.
AT Comets
Asteroid surveys dont detect comets
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(KNIGHT AND AHEARN 02)

Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland (October 24, Matthew and Michael, How Well Do We Understand the Cometary Hazard? NASA Workshop on Scientific Requirements for
Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids, pg. 61)
Comparison of the 136 comets discovered since 1 January 1999 reveals that non-survey observers are much better than the surveys designed to search for NEOs at finding bright comets with
small perihelion distances (q 2 AU). Since large comets are generally brighter, and in order for a comet to collide with the Earth it must have q 1 AU, the comets which the surveys are
of the 18 newly discovered comets which reach perihelion

interior to the Earths orbit were not found by the NEO surveys, but rather by non-survey observers. This large
fraction of missed comets by the surveys indicates that the hazards of impacts by comets are still very uncertain due to selection effects of the surveys. These selection effects
cause NEO surveys to miss bright comets with small perihelion distance. There does not appear to be a strong
missing are precisely the ones that most need to be detected. Since the beginning of 1999, 10
preference for any particular inclination, however more comets are missed in the southern sky than the northern, underscoring the need for dedicated near Earth comet surveys in the southern
These and other selection effects must be accounted for in order to better understand
the cometary hazard and to improve our current ability to detect potentially hazardous
comets. Due to their diffuse appearance, large rates of motion across the sky, varying
locations on the sky, and extreme variation in brightness throughout their orbits, comets
are not being detected effeciently using the current asteroid detection techniques. Therefore, surveys to protect us from potentially hazardous comets must be
hemisphere.
conducted very differently from surveys for asteroids, both because the long periods of these comets make cataloging them long in advance of a threat impossible and because the surveys are not
finding them.
Low riskactive comets only represent 1% of the NEO threat

(Levasseur-Regourd 07)
A. Chantal, prof at Universit P. & M. Curie (Paris VI), Aronomie CNRS-IPSL, Ch. 10: Physical Properties of NEOs and Risks of an Impact: Current Knowledge and Future Challenges, in
Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach, SpringLink)
The near Earth objects (hereafter NEOs) population consists of asteroids (or fragments thereof), which are rocky objects; it also includes cometary nuclei, consisting of ice and dust, which
happen to eject gases and dust whenever they are sufficiently heated by the solar radiation, and of so-called defunct or dormant comets, which have lost all their ice or are coated by an insulating
Asteroids most likely represent the main population. However, dormant and defunct comets could represent up to 18% of
the total population, and active comets about 1% of the total population (Binzel et al. 2004).
dust mantle.
AT Ozone
Minimal ozone depletion from small NEOs
(Birks et al. 07)
John, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), U of Colorado, Paul Crutzen Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry,
Raymond Roble, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Ch. 13: Frequent Ozone Depletion Resulting from Impacts of Asteroids and Comets, in Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society:
An Interdisciplinary Approach, SpringLink)
Both water vapor and NOx are rapidly transported downward to the stratosphere for all three impact cases. Figure 13.4 shows changes in the vertical distribution of these species during the first
50 days following large, medium and small impacts; the results for NOx and water vapor are extended to one year in Fig. 13.5. Large fractions of both water vapor and NOx have descended
below 50 km (height of the normal stratopause), with concentrations peaking in the stratosphere after only three months. Changes in ozone concentrations are shown in Fig. 13.6 for all three
injection of NO
and H2O causes large ozone depletions in the upper stratosphere that persist through the
first year. Ozone depletions are summarized in Fig. 13.7 for the large, medium and small impact cases. By day 50 ozone depletion of the
globally integrated ozone column (above 30 km) has been depleted by 58%, 9% and 1% for the
large, medium and small impact cases. These depletions continue to increase beyond day 50
for the large and medium impact cases. Local depletions within the hemisphere of impact are much larger. Stratospheric ozone levels are expected to
cases out to day 50, and ozone depletions for the large impact are simulated for the first full year following impact in Fig. 13.5. For the large impact case,
recover over a period of 23 years as water vapor and NOy are slowly removed to the troposphere.
AT Nukes Bad
Nuclear deflection works fragmentation mitigates all threat
(Rogers 07)
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Gabe Rogers (Control Engineer from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory) Comparison of the Efficiency of Various
Asteroid Hazard Mitigation Techniques, 2007, http://www.aero.org/conferences/planetarydefense/documents/ISP%20White%20paper
%20%28Rogers%29.pdf
nuclear detonations are the only possible mitigation option in the near future. In
terms of sheer efficiency, a nuclear detonation will provide the most V for the least
amount of weight of any system proposed here, given reasonably short mission times. No other device currently proposed can
release the kind of energy per mass that a nuclear device can. Isps, while varying sharply as the yield of the device increases,
For large hazards or short lead times,
are on the order of 1 106 to 1 107s. For large hazards 1 km and over, this might be the only option available in the near future. For hazard mitigation using detonation nuclear weapons, the
A weapon could be detonated in a standoff position close to the threat,

causing portions of the body to melt and shear off providing change in the bodys orbit. A
device could be soft-landed and detonated causing cratering and ejecting mass into an
escape velocity to produce a thrust. Finally, a device could be buried to either cause
cratering or fragmentation of the threat into smaller pieces. This final option would either require a complex lander and low-g mining operation, or a penetrator with enough closing
device could be delivered in three ways.
velocity to bury the device to sufficient depth before detonation. A technological threshold that must be achieved before implementing any nuclear strategy for hazard mitigation is to understand
how nuclear devices may fragment an asteroid. As discussed in the impact section, blowing a threatening asteroid apart while trying to deflect it may prove to be as grave a hazard as the original
non-disrupted asteroid. Thus, when considering a nuclear strategy, methods to analyze the risk of disruption must be developed which ensure that, if an asteroid disrupts, the V of most
fragments avoids the Earth. Standoff Detonation Determining the change in velocity a standoff detonation will provide is difficult to determine because the geometry of the hazard plays such a
large part in the equations, and this is generally not well defined until an imager can perform a detailed observation of the asteroid or comet. Another difficulty is getting the irradiated shell to
blow off the body in a controlled direction. Ahrens, T. J. and Harris, A. W, [1994] goes into great detail about the equations used in determining the impulse created by an explosion. From these
equations the specific impulses shown in Fig. 1 were derived. Surface Detonation In terms of efficiency, the surface detonation option provides the most V for the least amount of mass
delivered. As mentioned earlier, standoff detonations have a large amount of uncertainty in total impulse since the geometry and material composition of the body helps to determine the amount
of energy imparted through the system. Although the mass of the buried device is equivalent to that of a surface detonation, the delivery system would be more complex and massive. The
change in velocity imparted by a surface detonation is equal to the momentum impulse, p, of the explosion divided by the mass of the hazard minus ejected mass, shown in Equation 12. The
velocity change is in km/s and Mej the amount of material ejected from cratering caused by the explosion in kilogram. Buried Detonation Whereas buried detonation can be used to cause
cratering effects similar to surface detonations, they are primarily used for fragmentation of a body. The size of the explosive charge needed to fragment a body is dependent on the size of the
hazard, its material composition, and the depth of burial. Analyses of buried detonations are discussed in Ahrens, T. J. and Harris, A.W, [1994]; Simonekno, V. A. et al., [1994], and Shafer, B. P. et
al., [1994]. If it is determined that a body is too large, or too little time is left to deflect it away from Earth using any of the techniques mentioned here, fragmentation is the last option. Though
the increased surface area created by

fragmenting a body allows atmospheric friction to erode more of the threat before impact,
many critics state that fragmenting an object could cause more damage than the single body would,
thus lessening the energy released from the bodies at impact. Nuclear Engines Another option that uses nuclear technology is that of nuclear engines. Nuclear engines have a higher ISP than that
of chemical engines (around 800 to 2500 s), thus requiring less fuel. A nuclear thermal rocket simply heats propellant in a reactor, then expands it through a nozzle to produce thrust. The same
equations for V and ISP used for chemical thrusters can be used for nuclear engines.
Comparative study concludes standoff nuclear explosion solve best

(Schaffer 07)
Mark, Charania and Olds, Associate Fellow AIAA, CEO and Engineer at SpaceWorks Engineering A.C and John, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Different NEO Mitigation Options,
http://www.aero.org/conferences/planetarydefense/2007papers/P2-1--Schaffer-Paper.pdf
This paper has outlined an effort to develop a process for comparing different NEO mitigation options using a consistent
methodology and common analysis assumptions. To accurately model these techniques, an entire mitigation mission from Earth departure to mission completion is simulated. In order to
determine the momentum the different options impart to the NEO, interactions with the NEO are approximated by combining published data about each technique with first-order estimates and
Newtonian physics. To fairly compare these techniques, additional metrics are considered in the ranking of the different options: applicability to the composition and rotation properties of the
NEO, technological readiness, degree of development difficulty, development cost, and deployment cost. The process developed here quantifies these different factors using expert analysis and
Six different NEO mitigation

options are evaluated relative to each other: kinetic impactor, standoff nuclear detonation, chemical rocket, gravity tractor, high Isp rocket, and mass driver. Direct
then, along with the induced change in velocity, determines an Overall Evaluation Criterion (OEC) for each technique.
comparisons between the techniques are made by applying identical starting conditions and mission parameters to each deflection option and comparing the OEC of each. The selected mitigation
techniques are applied to three sample NEO cases: Apophis, DArtagnan, and Athos. In the Apophis case, the kinetic impactor, standoff nuclear detonation, and gravity tractor rank highest while
the
standoff nuclear detonation is the best performer. Its very high effectiveness, generally
applicability to most NEO cases, and low technology requirements allow it to score very
highly in this study.
the high Isp rocket ranks the lowest. In both the DArtagnan and Athos cases, the standoff nuclear detonation ranks the highest and the gravity tractor ranks the lowest. Overall,
Standoff nuclear blast solves and prevents fragmentation

(Shiga 09)
David, New Scientist, Saving Earth from an asteroid strike, 3-28, lexis)
We could blast the asteroid with a nuclear bomb, but that would risk shattering it into smaller pieces that could still threaten Earth. Or maybe we should try to force it off course by
slamming into it with a heavy object - an unproven and therefore risky technique. Now there may be a third option: gently nudging the asteroid away from Earth
without breaking it apart, either by exploding a nuclear device at a distance or zapping it with high-powered lasers.
Astronomers have found thousands of asteroids that pass near Earth's orbit, and a few of these are on trajectories that give them a small chance of hitting Earth. The most worrying is a 270-metrewide asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting us in 2036. To investigate the best way to deflect this and other asteroids onto a harmless path, a team led by David
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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has modelled the impact of a nuclear explosion on an object's trajectory.
Their virtual asteroid was 1 kilometre in diameter and made of rocky rubble loosely bound together by
gravity, which is considered by many planetary scientists to be the most likely composition for small asteroids. Thirty years before the asteroid was set to collide with Earth, a
nuclear blast, equivalent to 100 kilotonnes of TNT, was set off 250 metres behind it. The nudge
from the explosion increased its velocity by 6.5 millimetres per second, a slight change but
enough for it to miss us. The technique also reduced the risk of a break-up - just 1 per cent of the asteroid's material
was dislodged by the blast, and of that only about 1 part in a million remained on a collision course with Earth. Dearborn adds that the technology for this
method is already established, unlike for the use of a heavy object to shove the asteroid onto a different path - the "kinetic impactor" strategy. "Should
an emergency arise, we should know that [the technology] is available, and we should have some idea of how to properly use it," he says.
Dearborn of the
NASA concludes negative

(Bucknam and Gold 08)
Mark, Deputy Dir for Plans in the Policy Planning Office of the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, Colonel USAF, PhD in War Studies from U of London, BS in physics, MS in materials
science and engineering from Virginia Tech & Robert, Chief Technologist for the Space Department at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins Asteroid Threat? The Problem of
Planetary Defence, Survival vol. 50 no. 5 | 2008 | pp. 141156)
NASAs March 2007 report stated plainly that using stand-off nuclear explosions to deliver an
impulsive force to a PHO would be 10100 times more effective than other means of
deflecting PHOs. Nonetheless, other tools and techniques, including kinetic impactors, gravity tractors, focused solar and laser energy, and rockets to change a PHOs orbital
velocity were identified and analysed.
*PHO = potentially hazardous object
Fragmentation solves
(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
However Keith Holsapple 6 has shown that rather than the above, kinetic
impacts at hypervelocity would likely create very large numbers of very
small fragments possessing large transverse velocities. Accordingly the mass per unit area normal to the NEOs trajectory would be very much reduced at the time of Earth
impact, and the consequences of multiple impacts, each being much less massive than the original
body, could then be very much more benign locally as well as globally. For example, if most fragments are smaller than 50
meters they will burn up in the atmosphere and not reach the Earths surface, with the net
effect being a spectacular light show with little or no damage. Furthermore, even if a few remaining fragments
of a 1 km diameter NEO have a diameter in the order of 100 meters, the global effects of their impact would
certainly be less severe than the original impact of the whole body since their mass and energy are proportional to the cube of their diameter.
Therefore, whether fragmentation is to be avoided at all costs or whether it can be used to advantage in the defense strategy is still very much an open issue. What is certain is that we must
characterize the NEOs well so that we can optimize the mission and better predict the consequences of a mitigation attempt7.
Nuclear Doesnt Work

Nuclear Option fails
(IAA 09)
International Academy of Astronautics, Dealing With The Threat To Earth From Asteroids And Comets, 2009 http://iaaweb.org/iaa/Scientific
%20Activity/Study%20Groups/SG%20Commission%203/sg35/sg35finalreport.pdf)
There is a persistent notion in lay circles that the way to deal with a dangerous NEO is to simply hit it with an ICBM and vaporize it in space. Unfortunately, reality is far removed from this
ICBM propulsion
system performance is insufficient to enable intercept beyond a few hundred kilometers above the
Earths surface. Stages must be added to an ICBM to enable it to achieve the necessary escape velocity and to place the weapon on an intercept trajectory with a NEO.
While these upper stage technologies are space qualified, such a system would have too low
illusion. While it is likely that we may be able to rapidly reconfigure an ICBM computer guidance system to intercept a point or object in near-Earth space,
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a reliability for the NEO intercept mission given the potentially horrendous consequences
of an Earth impact, and might thus require many sequential launches of several such vehicles to have any reasonable chance of successfully deflecting a NEO. Such
attempts would be part of a dedicated campaign utilizing several different launch vehicle types, designed with different upper stages, using different end game techniques, and different nuclear
at least one failed launch attempt is likely if many are

required, and with a nuclear payload this could result in serious environmental effects in
and of itself. Thus, it is clear that for the nuclear concept several dedicated designs of a inherently highly reliable launch vehicles and multi-stage interceptors would be extremely
desirable to loft the nuclear warheads, and thus the use of existing ICBMs, even if outfitted with current technology
upper stages, is highly undesirable if not essentially ruled out. Nevertheless, if there were no other option due to insufficient
warhead types, in order to obtain a high probability of success. Furthermore
warning time we might want to do all we can with the tools at hand rather than sit passively like the dinosaurs, and attempt intercepts with current space launchers and current upper stages if no
dedicated vehicles exist or could be developed in the time available. It would be perfectly rational to divert any and all launchers and spacecraft being designed for planetary exploration to
becoming NEO interceptors, whatever their state of development. Finally it must be made clear that many nuclear warheads intended for ICBMs exist that could be used with few, if any,
modifications as payloads for the purpose of deflection of NEOs, whatever launch vehicle and upper stage is used to get them to the NEO (see ref. 4).
***Timeframe Cards
AT 2013 Collision
Their 2013 claims are false probability is 1 in 909.000 chance of collision
(Yates 11)
(Yates, 6/28/11)
[David, Daily Mail, Asteroid hurtles towards earth, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-194540/Asteroid-hurtles-earth.html,
the
probability of the asteroid hitting Earth is just 1 in 909,000 and the risk of impact is likely
to decrease as they collect more information. The newly-discovered asteroid, known as 2003 QQ47, has a mass of around 2,600 million tons
An asteroid around two-thirds of a mile wide (1.2km) could hit the earth on March 21, 2014 and has been classified as "an event meriting careful monitoring" by astronomers. But they say
(2,600 billion kg). Its orbit calculations are currently based on just 51 observations during a seven-day period. Dr Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen's University, Belfast, one of the expert team
The NEO will be observable from Earth for the

next two months, and astronomers will continue to track it over this period." The giant rock was first
advising the UK NEO (Near Earth Objects) Information Centre, based in Leicester, said: "
observed on August 24 by Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program (LINEAR), based in Socorro, New Mexico. The observations were reported to the Minor Planet Centre in
Massachusetts, a centre for all new discoveries of asteroids and comets. The asteroid has been given a classification - known as a "Torino hazard rating" of one - defining it as "an event meriting
Scientists said it was likely to drop down the scale for hazard as more
observations were made. Kevin Yates, project manager for the UK NEO Information Centre, said: "As additional observations are
made over the coming months, and the uncertainties decrease, asteroid 2003 QQ47 is likely to
drop down the Torino scale.
careful monitoring."
AT 2017 Collision
2017 claims are false astronomical data has proves any collision with earth
(Sorin 11)
Sorin, 6/26/11
[Lorenti, SocyBerty, You are here: Home Issues The Earth Asteroid Will Not Hit Nt7 2019
The Earth Asteroid Will Not Hit Nt7 2019, http://socyberty.com/issues/the-earth-asteroid-will-not-hit-nt7-2019/,
Astronomers have ruled out the risk of a collision between Earth and asteroid 2002 NT7 on
February 1, 2019, but warned that the risk of future collisions with the earth it is possible, reports BBC. NT7 asteroid with a diameter about two kilometers, was discovered on 9 July,
initial estimates suggesting that there is risk that they will collide with the earth over 17
years. Latest observations disproved this hypothesis, however, astronomers noting that the
asteroid will not jeopardize The earth . However, they warned that further calculations are needed to
determine the asteroids orbit in the future and can not yet exclude the total risk of an
impact on 1 February 2060.AFP
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Das Asteroids Neg KCKCC

build them. "

even though the cumulative existential risks flowing

the U.S. space

Scientists are now using archived WISE

2. We cant deflect wont sustain deflection programs

societies will not sustain indefinitely a defense against

hypochondriac is going to lose much sleep over them.

3. Even if its feasible Bureaucratic inertia means the US wont deflect

many more immediate problems involving the lives of millions

2NC Squo Solves, yo.

there are 981 near-Earth asteroids of diameters of one kilometer and

AND, all extinction level asteroids have been mapped

the original Spaceguard Survey goals are within reach

2003; Stokes 2003; Sidle 2007; NRC Report 2010). As

For asteroids with diameter of 5 km

2NC Cant Deflect

AND, theres another warrant no international cooperation

2NC Wont Try To Deflect

The natural temptation with such an improbable event is to wait

***Large Asteroids Adv

given that the location of such an

A body of 100 meters300 meters in

death toll was

scientists estimate that a dangerous object strikes the

Many geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, and statisticians find

the killer asteroid is getting credit that it does not

Their authors distort the data.

papers that are selected

authors understand full well that

by jacking up the tiny possibility of such an

2NC Large Asteroids Never Happen

admit the inherent ambiguities

Chapman and Morrison have pondered

AND, not enough EXTINCITON LEVEL asteroids to pose a risk to Earth

It makes far more sense to

2NC Prefer Our Evidence

The NEO scientists attempted to

Scientists use quantitative assessments, even those which are technically

Journalists reproduce and recontextualize these assessments, reinforcing

Beyond very crude estimates, we do

the true hazard represented by multi-kilometer

2NC Authors Distort Data

their recommendations often

AND, prefer our argument empirics

a KT like disaster is expected every 50 or 100

the rate of technological change is higher

D) Conditional probabilityshort-timeframe existential risks effectively decrease the

if the unconditional (all-things-considered) probability of our being eradicated by superintelligence

War is possible economics, nationalism

we still had wars

Obsolescence of major war is impossiblestates inevitably slip into conflicts

major war was never

1NC AT: Mandelbaum War Not Possible

Peace does not keep itself

believe that peace is automatic.

1NC Their Impacts Arent Legit

Earth will be exposed to

anything short of a civilization-ending asteroid would be exceedingly unlikely to

2NC Nuclear War First

NEO (near earth

2NC Our Impacts Are Legit