Adaptation DA DDDDDDDDD

Adaptation DA
Contents
Adaptation DA .........................................................................................................................................................1
1nc .........................................................................................................................................................................2
2nc ov ....................................................................................................................................................................6
2nc – too late/defense ...........................................................................................................................................9
2nc – too late/defense (C02 Inev) ...................................................................................................................... 11
2nc – uq ............................................................................................................................................................... 14
2nc – uq – at: no new tech ................................................................................................................................. 17
2nc – link ............................................................................................................................................................ 18
2nc – link – renewables**.................................................................................................................................. 20
2nc – link – growth ............................................................................................................................................ 21
2nc – adaptation shields impact ........................................................................................................................ 22
2nc – agriculture ................................................................................................................................................ 26
2nc – agriculture – co2 shield............................................................................................................................ 27
2nc – econ ........................................................................................................................................................... 28
2nc – hurricanes** ............................................................................................................................................. 29
2nc – at: warming too fast ................................................................................................................................. 31
1nc
Too late to solve – feedbacks are irreversible and overwhelm the aff –
dismiss threshold arguments
Carey, November 2012 – freelance writer and former senior correspondent for
BusinessWeek, where he covered science, technology, medicine and the environment (John,
“Global Warming: Faster Than Expected?”, Scientific American (November 2012), 307, 50-55,
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n5/full/scientificamerican1112-
50.html
Evidence citing –
*Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the
University of Potsdam in Germany
*James E. Hansen, director of the nasa Goddard Institute for Space
Studies.
Scientists thought that if planetary warming could be kept below two degrees Celsius, perils such as
catastrophic sea-level rise could be avoided.¶ Ongoing data, however, indicate that three global
feedback mechanisms may be pushing the earth into a period of rapid climate change even
before the two degree C “limit” is reached: meltwater altering ocean circulation; melting
permafrost releasing carbon dioxide and methane; and ice disappearing worldwide.¶ The
feedbacks could accelerate warming , alter weather by changing the jet stream, magnify insect infestations and
spawn more and larger wildfires.¶ Over the past decade scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the
worst dangers of climate change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it was
thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would require limiting
the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the
preindustrial era's 280 ppm.¶ Now it appears that the assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe
show that the planet is changing faster than expected . More sea ice around the Arctic Ocean
is disappearing than had been forecast. Regions of permafrost across Alaska and Siberia are
spewing out more methane, the potent greenhouse gas, than models had predicted. Ice shelves in West
Antarctica are breaking up more quickly than once thought possible, and the glaciers they held
back on adjacent land are sliding faster into the sea. Extreme weather events, such as floods and the heat wave
that gripped much of the U.S. in the summer of 2012 are on the rise, too. The conclusion? “As scientists, we cannot say
that if we stay below two degrees of warming everything will be fine, ” says Stefan
Rahmstorf, a professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam in Germany.¶ The X
factors that may be pushing the earth into an era of rapid climate change are long-hypothesized feedback loops that may be
starting to kick in. Less sea ice, for example, allows the sun to warm the ocean water more, which melts even more sea ice. Greater
permafrost melting puts more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, which in turn causes
further permafrost melting, and so on.¶ The potential for faster feedbacks has turned some scientists into vocal
Cassandras. Those experts are saying that even if nations do suddenly get serious about reducing greenhouse
gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm limit, which seems increasingly unlikely ,
that could be too little, too late . Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350 ppm , “we
will have started a process that is out of humanity's control,” warns James E. Hansen, director of
the nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Sea levels might climb as much as five meters this century, he says.
That would submerge coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok. Meanwhile increased heat and drought could bring massive famines.
“The consequences are almost unthinkable,” Hansen continues. We could be on the verge of a rapid, irreversible
leap to a much warmer world.¶
Plan is zero-sum with adaptation
Lowe 9 – Policy Associate, Health Promotion Policy at Center for Science in the Public
Interest (Ashley, Josh Foster, Steve Winkelman, “Ask the Climate Question: Adapting to Climate
Change Impacts in Urban Regions”, June,
http://www.ccap.org/docs/resources/674/Urban_Climate_Adaptation-FINAL_CCAP%206-9-
09.pdf, CMR)
One challenge to implementation of adaptation actions is the competition with mitigation

efforts¶ for funding and support. With limited resources to devote to climate change, adaptation
activities¶ are often considered as “ zero-sum” trade-offs to mitigation strategies. To date, the majority of¶
activity and attention in the climate change realm, particularly at the local level, has revolved¶ around reducing GHG emissions to
reduce the global effects of climate change. As adaptation¶ strategies vie for political support and local
resources, they are often crowded out by what are¶ perceived to be more relevant or environmentally sound
mitigation efforts . Additionally, the¶ view that adaptation is competing with rather than complementing GHG reductions
means that¶ mitigation advocates are often fearful of funding competition from activities that adaptation will ¶ increasingly
necessitate. Even though adaptation is a distinctly local-level activity with local¶ benefits, these challenges contribute to the lack of
funding for adaptation planning and¶ implementation.
Focused adaptation solves their impacts best while avoiding global

resource shortages and disease spread
Goklany 12 – an independent scholar and author, is co-editor of the Electronic Journal of
Sustainable Development, former member of the U.S. delegation that established the IPCC and
helped develop its First Assessment Report (Indur Goklany, , “global warming Policies MIGHT
BE BAD for your health”, July 18, http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/goklany-
public_health.pdf, CMR)
PAR = populations- at-risk

Focused Adaptation
even if it were possible to roll climate - i.e. temperature,¶ precipitation and other climatic variables - back to 1990
Figure 6 shows that
levels through¶ drastic emissions reductions, it would at best reduce mortality from hunger,¶ malaria, and extreme
events in 2085 by 13% under the warmest (A1FI/4°C)¶ scenario, while adding a net 1.2 billion people to global
PAR of water stress ¶ (Figure 7, based on Arnell 2004). Such a rollback would require emissions to¶ be reduced to significantly below 1990
levels, which is infeasible with present¶ technology without incurring astronomical economic and social costs.¶ Alternatively,
one could focus on reducing vulnerability to hunger, malaria,¶ and extreme weather events. Such “focused adaptation”
efforts would¶ target 100% of the mortality (compared to a maximum of 13% for emission¶
reductions) while allowing society to benefit from positive impacts of global¶ warming on water stress, even as it
tries to reduce its negatives.¶ For malaria, focused adaptation efforts could include methods to improve¶ antenatal
care for expectant mothers in vulnerable areas, developing a¶ malaria vaccine, indoor residual spraying with DDT, insecticide-treated
bed¶ nets, and otherwise improving public health services (Reiter 2008). These¶ measures, according to the U.N. Millennium
Project (2005a), would reduce¶ malaria by 75% at a cost of $3 billion a year. By contrast, the maximum¶
reduction in malaria mortality that could be obtained in 2085 from emissions¶ reduction is 5%
(under the warmest scenario) (see Table 3) were climate to¶ be—implausibly—rolled back to its 1990 level.
For hunger, focused adaptation could include measures to develop¶ crops that would do better in poor
climatic or soil conditions (drought,¶ waterlogging, high salinity, or acidity) that could be exacerbated by global¶ warming,
and under the higher CO2 and temperature conditions that might¶ prevail in the future. The UNMP (2005b)
estimates that a 50% reduction in¶ hunger could cost an additional $12-15 billion per year (see Table 3), a¶ bargain compared to the cost of rolling back post-1990 global
warming.¶ For extreme weather events, focused adaptation would include improved¶ e arly w arning s ystems, evacuation
and response plans, transportation¶ networks and machines to move people, food, medicine and
other¶ critical humanitarian supplies before and after events strike, and building¶ technologies.
This approach—focused adaptation—can be extended to all the 37 disease ¶ and injury outcomes listed in Table 1.
Specifically, this entails reducing¶ vulnerability to today’s climate-sensitive global health problems that might¶ be exacerbated by global warming. This has the
advantage that it would¶ reduce death and disease from each of these outcomes, regardless¶ of whether
it is caused by global warming or something else, whereas¶ mitigation would only address that
portion caused by global warming. ¶ In other words, focused adaptation would address the whole
iceberg, while¶ mitigation would only address its tip, and at a much larger cost—essentially¶ paying more for less.
Resource crises cause extinction

Wenyu et al 6 (Xie, Prof. Phil. @ Shandong U., Zhihe Wang, Prof. @ School of Phil. And
Soc. Sci. @ Beijing Normal U., and George E. Derfer, School of Philosophy and the Social
Sciences, and George E. Derfer, Prof. Emeritus @ Cal. Poly. Pomona, “Whitehead and China:
Relevance and Relationship”, p. 28, Google Print)
The threats posed by war, imperialism, nuclear weapons, and terrorism are, furthermore, not the only
threats to the continued existence of civilization for which global anarchy is responsible. There are also the
interconnected threats of pollution, overpopulation, and resource shortages. Although there has been
serious discussion of the population explosion since the 1960s, very little has been done to stop it. China is one of the few countries
to have introduced effective measures to bring a halt to runaway population growth. In most of the rest of the world, the
continuation of the population explosion means that already struggling societies will, in the coming decades, be trying to meet the
needs of twice as many people with the same resources, or even fewer. Resource wars, meaning wars in which natural
resources are the primary cause, will
surely become increasingly prevalent . As absolute shortages in
food, water, and oil emerge, furthermore, the relative shortages, produced by the world's highly inequitable allocation
of resources, will become even more intolerable to disadvantaged groups, providing additional
motivation for terrorism against rich countries. Global apartheid combined with growing resource
shortages combined with hatred of imperialism combined with nuclearism makes for a very
volatile mixture .
Malaria kills half the world

Hinshelwood 4 (Colin, “Artemisinin: Malaria's Magic Bullet?”
http://www.cpamedia.com/history/malaria_miracle_drug/, CMR)
Alongside tuberculosis (TB) and AIDS, malaria

is the most deadly disease on the planet with over
300 million persons directly infected every year. Although over 70% of deaths occur in Africa
alone, almost half of the world' s population lives in tropical or sub-tropical regions and is
therefore at risk.
Disease causes extinction

Yu 9—Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science (Victoria, Human Extinction: The
Uncertainty of Our Fate, 22 May 2009, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-
extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate, CMR)
A pandemic will kill off all humans . In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known case was the bubonic
plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases,
new viral strains are constantly emerging — a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-
facilitated human extinction . Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to
find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIV’s rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s use of
reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are
certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and
AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of
new strains could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations
that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of
influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could
potentially lead to a “global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this
variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more
frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain — which could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).
2nc ov
It’s too late to solve warming – our Carey evidence says their authors
underestimate feedbacks like melting sea ice and permafrost which
inevitably push us over the tipping point – only our evidence qualifies
the threshold – even massive cuts to 350 ppm are insufficient to
reverse natural forces that are already underway, makes thier
impacts inevitable
Now, our offense – the plan forces zero-sum trades-off adaptation –
our Lowe evidence says mitigation and adaptation are two distinct
strategies that compete for resources and political will
Adaptation solves and outweighs the aff – Goklany compares the two
strategies and says even drastic emissions cuts will only solve 13
percent of the impacts associated with warming by 2085 – adaptation
spreads our efforts out to solve 100 percent of the mortality resulting
from resource crunches and disease spread
Resource shortages cause extinction – our Wenyu evidence says
countries will be driven to desperation and engage in nuclear
conflicts – most probable scenario since it’s not constrained by
rationality – short-term nuclear war also turns their environment
scenarios since it would cause nuclear winter and permanent
destruction
Disease cause extinction – the Yu evidence says mutation is highly
likely and causes rapid spread due to globalization – our internal link
short-circuits their defense, countries won’t have the resources for
vaccines and containment efforts their authors assume
Independently, malaria spread is a systemic impact and wipes out
half the global population –– populations will be especially vulnerable
without resources dedicated to adaptation
Default to certainty and immediacy
focused adaptation and¶ economic development—with mitigation of global warming indicates that¶ either adaptive approach will, for
A comparison of the two adaptive approaches—
a fraction of the cost of any significant¶ emission reductions, deliver greater benefits for human health and wellbeing.¶
These greater benefits would also be delivered faster because any¶ benefits from emission reductions would
necessarily be delayed by several ¶ decades due to the climate system’s inertia. No less important, they would¶
accrue to humanity with greater certainty because, while the reality of¶ hunger, malaria, and
extreme events is uncontested , the contribution¶ of global warming to these problems is, at
best, uncertain , as discussed¶ previously.
Moral obligation
Lomborg 9 – adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, founded and directs the
Copenhagen Consensus Center (Bjørn, “Adapting to Climate Change”, Aug 24,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/adapting-to-climate-change, CMR)
Striking the right balance between preventing global warming and adapting to its effects is one of
the most important – and most vexing – policy questions of our age. It is also often ignored.¶ According to the
conventional wisdom of many environmental campaigners, we should first do everything we can to mitigate
global warming, and only then focus on adaptation strategies. This seems wrong – even immoral – if
we could do more for people and the planet through adaptation.¶ Moreover, it is inconsistent with
the inescapable fact that, whatever we do , we cannot prevent all of global warming’s effects. If
we are ill-prepared, global warming will cause more deaths and devastation, especially in poor countries and
fragile societies. Adaptation would also mean saving many lives from catastrophes not related to global warming. If we
prepare societies for more ferocious hurricanes in the future, for example, we are also helping them to cope better with today’s extreme weather.
Top-experts agree adaptation focus is superior – solves their impact

Lomborg 11/5 – adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, founded and directs
the Copenhagen Consensus Center (Bjørn, “Climate Course Correction”, 2012,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/05/climate_course_correction?page=full,
CMR)
Whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney finds himself working from the Oval Office over the next four years, he will face the problem of tackling global warming without
will also have to accept that the policies of the
breaking the bank. He will have to realize that ignoring the problem will not make it go away -- but
past 20 years have not worked.¶ Those policies, like the pledges to reduce carbon emissions at
innumerable global conferences -- from Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to Kyoto in 1998 to Durban in 2011 -- have failed to tackle global warming. The total efforts
of the last 20 years of climate policy has likely reduced global emissions by less than 1 percent , or about 250 million
metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Even if this decrease were attained for 100 years, it would reduce the
temperature increase at the end of the century by an immeasurable one-hundredth of a degree

F ahrenheit. The seas would rise about one-twentieth of one inch less.¶ These policies have also failed because they rely on very expensive but unreliable green technologies
like wind turbines and solar panels. It is estimated that had the Kyoto Protocol been implemented as agreed, it would have cost $180 billion a year. Implementing the European
Union's climate policy for 2020 -- which calls for a 20 percent reduction below 1990 levels in CO2 emissions and reaches for 20 percent of total energy from renewables, both of
which are hard and hence expensive -- will cost about $250 billion a year. In a weak economy, such price tags make combating climate change an increasingly difficult political
sell -- just look at the collapse of the Spanish solar subsidies, the substantial cutbacks of subsidies in Germany, and the possible expiration of the U.S. wind tax credit by the end
of the year.¶ At the same time, developing countries like China and India are focused on economic growth, and have made little or no effort to reduce their emissions. Contrary
to conventional wisdom, China is no poster-boy for green energy: It gets about one-tenth of one percent of its energy from wind and less than one-five hundredth of one percent
from solar.¶ Telling the electorate to sacrifice hundreds of billions of dollars every year in order to have a barely measurable effect on the climate a century from now simply
doesn't work. The outcome of the current approach predictably ranges from complete abandonment of climate policies (as in the United States) to some sort of feel-good policies
Copenhagen
(as in the EU) that will do nothing useful, even as they incur significant costs. Neither is a long-term policy worthy of American leadership.¶ The
Consensus is a think tank that ranks the economically smartest approaches to a variety of issues. In 2009, we
asked 27 of the world's top climate economists to identify the costs and benefits of the top climate
solutions. A group of eminent economists, including three Nobel laureates , ranked the
smartest ways to fix the climate. Their answer was: Don't continue to expand current policies. Trying to make fossil
fuels so costly that no one wants them is bad economics, in addition to being bad politics.¶ They suggested instead three changes to the way the United States approaches climate
change. First, we should aim to make green energy so cheap everyone will want it. This will require heavy investment in research and development of better, smarter green
technologies. Such an investment has much lower costs than current climate policies (like the EU 2020-policy), but a much greater chance of allowing the entire world to make
the switch to green energy in the long run.¶ A good example is the innovation of fracked gas, which has made the price of natural gas drop dramatically -- allowing a switch in
electricity production away from coal. This in turn has singlehandedly caused the United States to reduce its annual CO2 emissions by about 500Mt, or about twice as much as
the entire global reductions from the last 20 years of international climate negotiations. Moreover, it has not cost the United States anything -- in fact, U.S. consumers are saving
about $100 billion per year in cheaper prices. That's a policy that is easy to sell around the world.¶ Second, we should investigate (but not deploy) geoengineering as a possible
insurance policy to runaway climate change. Cooling the planet with slightly whiter clouds over the Pacific could completely counteract global warming at the cost of $6 billion,
according to research by Eric Bickel and Lee Lane for the Copenhagen Consensus -- between 1,000 and 10,000 times cheaper than anything else we are considering today.¶
we should recognize that there are huge lags between our actions and their effects on the climate -- no
Third,
matter what we do, it will only affect the second half of this century. Thus, if we want to tackle
climate impacts such as Hurricane Sandy, we need to step up adaptation and make our societies more
resilient. This is mostly an inexpensive no-brainer.¶ Of course, technological breakthroughs are not a given. But there are many potential solutions
out there, and we really only need one to work. It makes technical sense, financial sense, and common sense to spend money on R&D until we
find renewable energy technologies that are economically viable.
Can’t solve warming or its effects, but adaptation checks

Goklany ‘11 (Dr. Indur, independent scholar who has worked with federal and state
governments, think tanks, and the private sector over 35 years, former representative to the
IPCC, former Julian Simon Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, a visiting
fellow the American Enterprise Institute, part of a chapter from “Climate Coup: Global
Warmings Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives”, page # below, CMR)
It is often argued that unless greenhouse gases are reduced forth with, the resulting global warming
could have severe, if not catastrophic, consequences for developing countries because they lack the economic and
human resources to cope with warming's consequences. But this argument has two major problems. First,
although developing countries' adaptive capacity is low today, it does not follow that their ability
to cope will be low forever. In fact, under the IPCC's warmest scenario , which would increase globally
averaged temperature by 4 degrees Celsius relative lo 1990, net GDP per capita in developing countries (after
accounting for losses due to climate change per the Stem Revieio's exaggerated estimates) will be double the
United States' 2006 level in 2100, and triple that in 2200. Thus, developing countries should be able
to cope with climate change substantially better in the future than the United States can today. But these
advances in adaptive capacity, which are virtually ignored by most assessments of the
impacts and damages from global warming, are the inevitable consequence of the assumptions
built into the IPCC's emission scenarios. Hence, the notion that developing countries will be
unable to cope with global warming does not square with the basic assumptions that underpin
the magnitude of emissions, global warming, and its projected impacts under the IPCC
scenarios. Second, global warming would not create new problems; rather it would exacerbate some
existing problems of poverty (e.g., hunger, malaria, extreme events), while relieving others (e.g., habitat loss and
water shortages in some places). One approach to dealing with the consequences of global warming is to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. That action would, however, reduce all global warming impacts, whether they are good
(e.g., net reduction in the global population at risk of water shortage or in the habitat used for cultivation) or bad (e.g., arguably
increased levels of malaria or hunger). And even where global warming provides no benefits, reducing emissions would
at best only reduce global warming's contribution to the problem, but not the whole
problem, since non-warming factors are also contributors .'111 With respect to mortality
from hunger, malaria, and extreme events, for example, global warming only contributes 13 percent of the
problem in 2085 (which is beyond the foreseeable future). Another approach to reducing the global warming impacts would
be to reduce the climate-sensitive problems of poverty through "focused adaptation."10* Focused adaptation would
allow society to capture the benefits of global warming while allowing it to reduce the totality of
climate-sensitive problems that warming might worsen. For mortality from hunger, malaria, and extreme
events, for instance, focused adaptation could through the foreseeable future address 100 percent
of the problem, whereas emission reductions would at most deal with only 13 percent .
[182-184]
2nc – too late/defense
Feedback cycles already triggered due to Arctic melting
Miller 12 – Richard Miller, professor at Creighton University specializing in morality and
public politics, 3-23-2012, “Global Suicide Pact,” Commonweal,
http://commonwealmagazine.org/%E2%80%98global-suicide-pact%E2%80%99, CMR
Because of the long life of CO2 , unless we immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent globally--that is, down to the level at which land vegetation and
the oceans remove these gases from the atmosphere--we can expect more extreme climate impacts for at least the next thousand years. In fact, since we are clearly not going to
it is probably already too late to save the summer sea ice in the Arctic. The
reduce greenhouse emissions immediately by 60 percent,
Arctic in summer could be virtually ice-free by as early as 2015, and totally ice-free by 2040. A dark, open
Arctic Ocean will absorb a great deal more of the sun's energy, which will further increase
global warming . This in turn will increase the melting of the permafrost, which will release CO2 and methane
(a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2). It is estimated that the complete melting of the permafrost alone could increase
warming by 4°C (7.2°F). Meanwhile, the Amazon suffered extreme droughts in both 2005 and 2010, losing millions of trees. As those trees decompose, they will
release an amount of CO2 equivalent to nearly 42 percent of the world's emissions in 2009; such events, repeated over time, could turn the Amazon rainforest from a "carbon
sink"--an important resource for drawing CO2 out of the atmosphere--to a significant source of CO2. These are but a few examples of "positive feedbacks," large-scale changes
that will increase future warming. Increased greenhouse gas emissions can push the climate system or elements of the system to a tipping point where the dynamics of the
system take over and cause very large changes that are completely beyond our control.
Feedbacks mean it’s too late – best evidence proves aff is insufficient
Knight 10/14/12 (Jasper, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies,
University of the Witwatersrand, Stephan Harrison, College of Life and Environmental Sciences,
University of Exeter, Penryn, “The impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface
systems”,
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1660.html#/ref2, CMR)
The failure of climate change mitigation through emissions reductions and trading. At present, governments'
attempts to
limit greenhouse-gas emissions through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to promote renewable and sustainable energy
sources are probably too late to arrest the inevitable trend of global warming 2, 81. Instead, there are
increasingly persuasive arguments that government and institutional focus should be on developing adaption policies that address
and help mitigate against the negative outcomes of global warming, rather than carbon trading and cataloguing greenhouse-gas
emissions. There are a number of reasons why we take this viewpoint. (1) Earth-system feedbacks are an important
component of climate forcing, and therefore addressing greenhouse-gas emissions alone is an
insufficient strategy for managing global warming. (2) Different national and disciplinary (that is, from the perspective
of soils, forests, oceans and so on) schemes for calculating carbon budgets use different methodologies and assumptions, and have a
different mix of natural and disturbed ecosystems and fossil-fuel resources82, 83, 84. This means that carbon management
schemes are based on poorly constrained data and on budgetary sleights-of-hand that
may have little relationship to the real world . (3) The future impacts of global warming on land-surface
stability and the sediment fluxes associated with soil erosion, river downcutting and coastal erosion are relevant to sustainability,
biodiversity and food security. Monitoring and modelling soil erosion loss, for example, are also means by which to examine
problems of carbon and nutrient fluxes, lake eutrophication, pollutant and coliform dispersal, river siltation and other issues85. An
Earth-systems approach can actively inform on these cognate areas of environmental policy and planning86. (4) Earth surface
systems' sensitivity to climate forcing is still poorly understood. Measuring this geomorphological sensitivity will identify those
systems and environments that are most vulnerable to climatic disturbance, and will enable policymakers and managers to prioritize
action in these areas. This is particularly the case in coastal environments, where rocky and sandy coastlines will yield very different
responses to climate forcing, and where coastal-zone management plans are usually based on past rather than future climatic
patterns87.
Even with zero emissions

Knight 10/14/12 (Jasper, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies,
University of the Witwatersrand, Stephan Harrison, College of Life and Environmental Sciences,
University of Exeter, Penryn, “The impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface
systems”,
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1660.html#/ref2, CMR)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed in its fourth assessment report that different biophysical environments are likely to
exhibit different responses to ongoing climate change1. Generic properties of these environmental responses include spatial and temporal variability,
nonlinearity, feedbacks involving different biogeochemical processes and time lags. The context for understanding these environmental responses is
brought into focus by many recent studies showing that, irrespective of future greenhouse-gas emissions , a
mean surface temperature increase of 2 °C (over 1990 levels) is inevitable , and an increase of 4 °C or
more is not unlikely by 2100 (refs 2,3). Biosphere responses to global climate change are relatively well understood. Studies show
that climate change alters biospheric systems' internal dynamics and interconnectedness, for example, between plant phenology and insect behaviour4,
5. Biome and species' range shifts, both laterally and by elevation, are now taking place in response to climate forcing6, 7. The importance of such range
shifts for ecosystem structure and function, biodiversity, endemism and gene flow has been widely recognized7, and there is much policy debate on
management of biosphere responses to climate change8, 9.
2nc – too late/defense (C02 Inev)
***Don’t read these with CO2 fertilization***
Too late to solve warming – multiple experts confirm – aff trades-off
with adaptation
Dye 10-26 (Lee, “It May Be Too Late to Stop Global Warming”, 2012,
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/late-stop-global-
warming/story?id=17557814&singlePage=true#.UIxKJIZ7xKg, CMR)
Evidence citing –
*Jasper Knight of Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa,
*Stephan Harrison of the University of Exeter in England
*Richard A. Muller, physicist
Here's a dark secret about the earth's changing climate that many scientists believe, but few seem eager to discuss: It's too late to stop global
warming .¶ Greenhouse gasses pumped into the planet's atmosphere will continue to grow
even if the industrialized nations cut their emissions down to the bone. Furthermore, the severe
measures that would have to be taken to make those reductions stand about the same chance
as that proverbial snowball in hell.¶ Two scientists who believe we are on the wrong track argue in the current issue of the journal
Nature Climate Change that global warming is inevitable and it's time to switch our focus from trying
to stop it to figuring out how we are going to deal with its consequences .¶ "At present,
governments' attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to promote
renewable and sustainable energy sources are probably too late to arrest the inevitable trend of
global warming," Jasper Knight of Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Stephan Harrison of the
University of Exeter in England argue in their study. Those efforts, they continue, "have little relationship to the real world."¶ What is clear, they
contend, is a profound lack of understanding about how we are going to deal with the loss of huge land areas, including some entire island nations, and massive migrations as
humans flee areas no longer suitable for sustaining life, the inundation of coastal properties around the world, and so on ... and on ... and on.¶ That doesn't mean nations should
stop trying to reduce their carbon emissions, because any reduction could lessen the consequences. But the cold fact is no matter what Europe and the
United States and other "developed" nations do, it's not going to curb global climate change ,
according to one scientist who was once highly skeptical of the entire issue of global warming.¶ "Call me a converted skeptic," physicist Richard A. Muller
says in an op-ed piece published in the New York Times last July.¶ Muller's latest book, "Energy for Future Presidents," attempts to poke holes in nearly everything we've
been told about energy and climate change, except the fact that "humans are almost entirely the cause" of global warming.¶ Those of us who live in the "developed" world
initiated it. Those who live in the "developing" world will sustain it as they strive for a standard of living equal to ours.¶ "As far as global warming is concerned, the developed
world is becoming irrelevant," Muller insists in his book. We could set an example by curbing our emissions, and thus claim in the future that "it wasn't our fault," but about
the only thing that could stop it would be a complete economic collapse in China and the rest of the
world's developing countries.¶ As they race forward, their industrial growth -- and their greenhouse gas
emissions -- will outpace any efforts by the West to reduce their carbon footprints, Muller contends.¶
" China has been installing a new gigawatt of coal power each week ," he says in his Times piece, and each
plant pumps an additional ton of gases into the atmosphere " every second ."¶ " By the time
you read this , China's yearly greenhouse gas emissions will be double those of the United States,
perhaps higher," he contends. And that's not likely to change.¶ "China is fighting poverty, malnutrition, hunger, poor
health, inadequate education and limited opportunity. If you were the president of China, would
you endanger progress to avoid a few degrees of temperature change?" he asks.¶ Muller suggests a better course for the
West to take than condemning China for trying to be like the rest of us. Instead, we should encourage China to switch from coal to natural gas for its power plants, which would
cut those emissions in half.¶ "Coal," he writes, "is the filthiest fuel we have."¶ Meanwhile,the West waits for a silver bullet , possibly a geo-engineering
solution that would make global warming go away by reflecting sunlight back into space, or fertilizing the oceans so they could absorb more carbon dioxide, or something we
haven't even heard about. Don't expect it anytime soon.¶ It would take a bold, and perhaps foolish, nation to take over the complex systems
that control the planet's weather patterns. That's sort of what we did beginning with the Industrial Revolution. Now we have to live with it.¶ So maybe Knight and Harrison are
changes to our planet that seem inevitable.¶ We can fight global warming and try to
right. It's time to pay more attention to how we are going to handle
mitigate the consequences , but it isn't going to go away.
It’s irreversible – feedbacks, China, natural gas

Mims ’12 (Christopher, “Climate scientists: It’s basically too late to stop warming”, March
26, http://grist.org/list/climate-scientists-its-basically-too-late-to-stop-warming/, CMR)
If you like cool weather and not having to club your neighbors as you battle for scarce resources, now’s the time to move to Canada,
because the story of the 21st century is almost written, reports Reuters. Global warming is close to being irreversible ,
and in some cases that ship has already sailed. Scientists have been saying for a while that we have until between 2015 and 2020 to
start radically reducing our carbon emissions, and what do you know: That deadline’s almost past! Crazy how these things sneak up
on you while you’re squabbling about whether global warming is a religion. Also, our science got better in the meantime, so now we
know that no matter what we do, we can say adios to the planet’s ice caps. For ice sheets — huge refrigerators that slow down
the warming of the planet — the tipping point has probably already been passed , Steffen said. The West Antarctic
ice sheet has shrunk over the last decade and the Greenland ice sheet has lost around 200 cubic km (48 cubic miles) a year since the
1990s. Here’s what happens next: Natural climate feedbacks will take over and, on top of our prodigious human-
caused carbon emissions, send us over an irreversible tipping point. By 2100, the planet will be hotter than it’s been since the
time of the dinosaurs, and everyone who lives in red states will pretty much get the apocalypse they’ve been hoping for. The
subtropics will expand northward, the bottom half of the U.S. will turn into an inhospitable desert, and everyone who lives there will
be drinking recycled pee and struggling to salvage something from an economy wrecked by the destruction of agriculture, industry,
and electrical power production. Water shortages, rapidly rising seas, superstorms swamping hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth
of infrastructure: It’s all a-coming, and anyone who is aware of the political realities knows that the odds are slim that our
government will move in time to do anything to avert the biggest and most avoidable disaster short of all-out nuclear war. Even
if our government did act, we can’t control the emissions of the developing world. China is
now the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet and its inherently unstable autocratic political
system demands growth at all costs. That means coal. Meanwhile, engineers and petroleum geologists are
hoping to solve the energy crisis by harvesting and burning the nearly limitless supplies of natural gas frozen
in methane hydrates at the bottom of the ocean, a source of atmospheric carbon previously considered so
exotic that it didn’t even enter into existing climate models.
Multiple studies confirm

Gillett 10—director @ the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (Nathan,
“Ongoing climate change following a complete cessation of carbon dioxide emissions”, Nature
Geoscience, http://sos.noaa.gov/Docs/ngeo1047-aop.pdf, CMR)
Several recent studies have demonstrated that CO2-induced 17 global mean temperature
change is irreversible on human 18 timescales1_5. We find that not only is this climate change
19 irreversible, but that for some climate variables, such as Antarctic 20 temperature and North
African rainfall, CO2-induced climate 21 changes are simulated to continue to worsen for
many centuries 22 even after a complete cessation of emissions. Although it is 23 also well
known that a large committed thermosteric sea level 24 rise is expected even after a cessation of
emissions in 2100, 25 our finding of a strong delayed high-latitude Southern Ocean 26 warming at intermediate depths
suggests that this effect may be 27 compounded by ice shelf collapse, grounding line retreat, and
ensuing accelerated ice discharge in marine-based sectors of the 28 Antarctic ice sheet,
precipitating a sea level rise of several metres. 29 Quantitative results presented here are subject to
uncertainties 30 associated with the climate sensitivity, the rate of ocean heat 31 uptake and the rate of carbon uptake in
CanESM1, but our 32 findings of Northern Hemisphere cooling, Southern Hemisphere 33
warming, a southward shift of the intertropical convergence zone, 34 and delayed and ongoing
ocean warming at intermediate depths 35 following a cessation of emissions are likely to be
robust . Geo- 36 engineering by stratospheric aerosol injection has been proposed 37 as a response measure in the event of
a rapid melting of the 38 West Antarctic ice sheet24. Our results indicate that if such a 39 melting were driven by ocean warming
at intermediate depths, as 40 is thought likely, a geoengineering response would be ineffective 41 for several centuries owing to
the long delay associated with 42 subsurface ocean warming.
30-year time lag – any effect takes decades

Walker ‘8, PhD, and King, Professor @ Oxford (Gabrielle, PhD in Chemistry, Sir David,
Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and
a senior scientific adviser to UBS, The Hot Topic, pg. 47, CMR)
Most people have now realized that climate change is upon us . If pushed, most would probably also say that if we don't do
something to change the way we live, things are likely to get worse. But few seem to have noticed one of the most
important points to emerge from the last few years of scientific projections. All the evidence suggests that
the world will experience significant and potentially highly dangerous changes in climate over the next
few decades no matter what we do now. That's because the ocean has a built-in lag . It takes time
to heat up, which is why the nicest time to swim is often the end of the summer rather than the middle. The same principle holds
for global warming, but on a longer timescale: Because the oceans gradually soak up heat generated by the extra
greenhouse gases, the full effect won't be felt for decades to centuries. This means that whatever we do now
to change our carbon habits will take several decades to have any effect. In other words, according to our most
sophisticated models, the next twenty to thirty years will be more or less the same whether we quickly kick the
carbon habit or continue burning as many fossil fuels as we can.1 Whatever we do today to reduce emissions will
matter for our children's generation and beyond, but not for our own. The problem of climate change is one of legacy.
2nc – uq
International focus shifting to adaptation – too late to stop tipping
points
Castle 11/29 (Ben, MSc in Climate Change and Development from the Institute of
Development Studies, researcher on climate change issues for the Democracy Center in Bolivia,
“We Have to Be on Guard About False Solutions for Climate Change”, 2012,
http://www.alternet.org/environment/we-have-be-guard-about-false-solutions-climate-
change?paging=off, CMR)
Regardless of the
As the world's governments gather yet once more for a global climate summit, the prospects for the future look more ominous than ever.
outcome of this year’s COP 18 climate change negotiations in Doha, many now fear it is too late to prevent
global temperature rise exceeding 2°C this century - which has long been considered the point beyond which impacts become far more serious. Sir Bob
Watson, the UK Government’s Chief Scientist, said last year that ‘‘the idea of a 2°C target is largely out
of the window .’’ The current trajectory of global emissions puts us in line for a stunningfour degree, or evensix degree increase this century.¶ This is
the alarming backdrop to the rise of adaptation as a theme of international climate change
negotiations. A fringe issue just a few years ago, adaptation is now center stage of the discussions . At the 2009
meeting in Copenhagen, developed countries pledged to raise US $ 100 billion per year by 2020 in climate
finance for developing countries – with a significant proportion of this to be earmarked for adaptation.
This was considered by many to beone of the few positives from the conference and a sign that the COPs were perhaps finally starting to yield some tangible results for
developing countries.
Focus on adaptation in the SQUO – ensures resilience

Heffernan 11/28 – freelance writer and the former editor of Nature Climate Change (Olive,
“Adapting to a warmer world: No going back”, 2012, http://www.nature.com/news/adapting-
to-a-warmer-world-no-going-back-1.11906, CMR)
Justa decade ago, 'adaptation' was something of a dirty word in the climate arena — an insinuation that nations could continue with business
But greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing at an unprecedented rate and
as usual and deal with the mess later.
countries have failed to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. That stark reality has forced
climate researchers and policy-makers to explore ways to weather some of the inevitable changes.¶ “As
progress to reduce emissions has slowed in most countries, there has been a turn towards adaptation ,” says Jon Barnett, a
political geographer at the University of Melbourne in Australia.¶ Adaptation has tended to focus on hard
defences, such as shoring up sea walls and building dams. But as awareness of adaptation has grown, so too has the concept. “Adaptation means different things to
different people, and is extremely location specific,” says Neil Adger, an environmental and economic geographer at the University of Exeter, UK. Although residents in
local
Bangladesh can raise their houses on stilts to survive floods, some settlements in Alaska and the Maldives must move in the face of rising sea levels.¶ Increasingly, it is
people who are deciding how to make their communities more resilient — and that is increasing the
chances of success. “A solely top-down approach to adaptation — focusing on heavy investment in engineering and infrastructure — will not work as it is
expensive and impractical,” says Robert Lempert, who researches decision-making at the RAND corporation, a think tank in Santa Monica, California.
Humanity will adapt to warming – efforts are already started

Borick & Rabe ’12. Christopher Borick, Prof @ Muhlenberg, and Barry G. Rabe, senior
fellow @ Brookings, May 2012, “Americans Cool on Geoengineering Approaches to Addressing
Climate Change,” Issues in Governance Studies, Iss. 47,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/5/30%20geo%20engineering
%20rabe%20borick/30%20geo%20engineering%20rabe%20borick.pdf
With expanding concern that climate change is already impacting environments around the planet there has been
increasing discussion and planning for methods of climate adaptation. From measures to fortify
coastal areas from rising sea levels to research on agricultural practices during prolonged droughts, climate adaptation
efforts are intensifying on an international level. Given the limited success in efforts to mitigate increasing
temperatures, some have suggested that governments would be better served if they concentrated on
finding ways to adapt to a warmer planet rather than trying to stop warming from happening.
This could involve a wide range of initiatives such as adjusting to higher temperatures or rising sea levels. The results of the
NSAPOCC, which was fielded in December of 2011, indicate that the American public largely rejects the notion that governments
should stop mitigation efforts and turn to adaptation measures. Two out of every three Americans said that they do not agree that we
should shift attention away from trying to stop global warming and instead focus on adaptation.
Major international attention to adaptation now

Chris Berg, research fellow @ Inst. of Public Affairs, 5-8-2012, “We can’t stop climate
change,” ABC, http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3997798.html
The release of the Productivity Commission's draft report into climate adaptation at the end of last month could have been a spark
that changed the debate in Australia. That's because it implicitly suggested that adapting to climate change – regardless of
whether its origin is anthropogenic, 'natural', or whatever – is now the main game . And the PC is not alone. In the 2007
report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there was just one chapter on adaptation. The previous report in 2001
was the same: one chapter. Now, according to the outline of the 2013 report, the adaptation
section will blow out to
four chapters. This new attention on adaptation makes sense. Nobody believes global emissions will be
reduced to the extent the IPCC claims is urgent and necessary. Supposed deadlines for action have come and
gone, over and over. By 2012, sceptics, alarmists, realists, and optimists should all agree that
seriously mitigating climate change is a pipe dream.
International efforts to promote adaptation underway – allows us to

survive tipping points
Sovacool 11 – Associate professor, Vermont Law School (Benjamin K, “Adapting to Climate
Change the Right Way”, 12/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-k-sovacool/adapting-
to-climate-chang_1_b_1146910.html, CMR)
Although the damage was surprising, the causes behind it were not. For decades, scientists have warned that human-caused
greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change they induce would result in weather extremes that grow more numerous and more
intense. Climate change adaptation -- adjustments in natural or human systems in response to the impacts of climate
change -- has thus become an international priority .¶ Such investments in adaptation make sense.
Adaptation is necessary if communities and countries are to survive drastic changes in climate once
environmental tipping points -- such as acidification of ocean, alteration of the Gulf Stream, or thawing permafrost -- are
crossed.¶ Adaptation can also produce benefits beyond resilience to climate change, such as economic stability, improved
environmental quality, community investment, and local employment. In many developing countries, climate change adaptation
efforts are being integrated into strategies to reduce poverty. The Asian Development Bank has estimated, for
instance, that every $1 invested in adaptation now could yield as much as $40 in economic benefits by 2030.¶ Global
efforts are underway to adapt in the face of droughts, rising sea levels, storms, and floods. The city of
therefore
Perth in Western Australia, for example, is building a desalination plant to offset losses in water from declining precipitation.
Planners in the Netherlands are constructing dikes, dams, and floating houses to cope with increased flooding and rises in sea
level. Londoners are investing in a Thames River barrier system to better respond to floods.
Prefer our evidence – their authors ignore new tech

Goklany 11 [Dr. Indur, independent scholar who has worked with federal and state governments,
think tanks, and the private sector over 35 years, former representative to the IPCC, former Julian Simon
Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, a visiting fellow the American Enterprise
Institute, part of a chapter from “Climate Coup: Global Warmings Invasion of Our Government and Our
Lives”, page # below, CMR]
The second major reason why future adaptive capacity has been underestimated (and the impacts of global
warming systematically overestimated) is that few impact studies consider secular technological changes. Most
assume that no new technologies will come on line, although some do assume greater adoption of existing technologies
with higher GDP per capita and, much less frequently, a modest generic improvement in productivity. [176-177]
Adaptation will continue in the SQUO

Goklany 11 [Dr. Indur, independent scholar who has worked with federal and state governments,
Note that economic development can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, all else being equal, higher economic
development would lead to higher temperatures from global warming. On the other hand, it also means higher adaptive
capacity to cope not only with global warming but also with any other problems that humanity faces." In addition, one
should expect that as time marches on, even if economic development does not advance, existing technologies should
improve and new technologies should come on line to respond to any adverse impacts of global warming or
take advantage of any positive impacts. Such technological change, which I call "secular" technological change to
distinguish it from technological change resulting from additional economic development, would occur because of the
normal accretion of technology and knowledge over time. Secular technological change would further boost
adaptive capacity.11 Improvements in adaptive capacity beg the question of whether the economic development assumed by the
IPCC scenarios {accompanied by tech-nological change) will increase the damages from global warming faster than the increases in
adaptive capacity and, consequently, whether global warming would hinder sustainable development or whether insufficient
economic and technological development would hinder the ability to cope with future global warming. [160]
2nc – uq – at: no new tech
Lol, no
Goklany & Morris 12/7/11 – Ph.D. is an author and a research who was associated with the IPCC for 20 years, expert
reviewer and U.S. delegate to that organization AND VP of research at the Reason Foundation, a non-profit think tank (Indur M,
AND Julian, “How the IPCC Reports Mislead the Public, Exaggerate the Negative Impacts of Climate Change and Ignore the Benefits
of Economic Growth”, http://reason.org/files/how_ipcc_misleads_on_climate_change_impacts.pdf, CMR)
The second major reason why future adaptive capacity has been underestimated (and the impacts of
global warming systematically overestimated ) is that few impact studies consider secular technological
change.25 Most assume that no new technologies will come on line, although some do assume greater adoption of
existing technologies with higher GDP per capita and, much less frequently, a modest generic improvement in productivity.26 Such
an assumption may have been appropriate during the Medieval Warm Period, when the pace of
technological change was slow, but nowadays technological change is fast (as indicated in Figures 1 through 5)
and, arguably, accelerating .27 It is unlikely that we will see a halt to technological change unless so-called
precautionary policies are instituted that count the costs of technology but ignore its benefits, as some governments have already
done for genetically modified crops and various pesticides.28
--This is obviously stupid

Goklany, PhD, ’11 [Dr. Indur, independent scholar who has worked with federal and state governments,
The assumption that there would be little or no improved or new technologies that would become available
between 1990 and 2100 (or 2200), as assumed in most climate change impact assessments, is clearly naive.
In fact, a comparison of today's world against the world of 1990 (the base year used in most impact studies to date)
shows that even for this brief 20-year span, this assumption is invalid for many, if not most, human
enterprises. [177]
2nc – link
Multiple links – Focus, resources, and the energy market
Exaggerating the importance of global warming seriously risks misdirecting the world’s priorities
and its resources in efforts to reduce poverty and improve public health. Equally importantly, policies to curb global
warming would, by increasing the price of energy and reducing its usage worldwide, slow down, if not reverse, the pace of
economic growth. As economic development is central to the fight against poverty, such policies
would tend to perpetuate the diseases—and all the other problems—associated with poverty. Specifically, since the diseases of poverty are currently
responsible for 70–80 times more death and disease than global warming, such policies may well be counterproductive. They would, moreover, slow
advances in society’s adaptive capacity, and otherwise retard improvements in human well-being (Goklany 2009e).
“Silver bullet” energy solutions trade-off with adaptation

Dye 10-26 (Lee, “It May Be Too Late to Stop Global Warming”, 2012,
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/late-stop-global-
warming/story?id=17557814&singlePage=true#.UIxKJIZ7xKg, CMR)
Evidence citing –
*Jasper Knight of Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa,
*Stephan Harrison of the University of Exeter in England
*Richard A. Muller, physicist
Here's a dark secret about the earth's changing climate that many scientists believe, but few seem eager to discuss: It's too late to
stop global warming.¶ Greenhouse gasses pumped into the planet's atmosphere will continue to grow even if the industrialized
nations cut their emissions down to the bone. Furthermore, the severe measures that would have to be taken to make those
reductions stand about the same chance as that proverbial snowball in hell.¶ Two scientists who believe we are on the wrong track
argue in the current issue of the journal Nature Climate Change that global warming is inevitable and it's time to
switch our focus from trying to stop it to figuring out how we are going to deal with its
consequences.¶ "At present, governments' attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions through carbon cap-and-
trade schemes and to promote renewable and sustainable energy sources are probably too late to
arrest the inevitable trend of global warming," Jasper Knight of Wits University in Johannesburg,
South Africa, and Stephan Harrison of the University of Exeter in England argue in their study. Those
efforts, they continue, "have little relationship to the real world."¶ What is clear, they contend, is a profound lack of understanding
about how we are going to deal with the loss of huge land areas, including some entire island nations, and massive migrations as
humans flee areas no longer suitable for sustaining life, the inundation of coastal properties around the world, and so on ... and on ...
and on.¶ That doesn't mean nations should stop trying to reduce their carbon emissions, because any reduction could lessen the
consequences. But the cold fact is no matter what Europe and the United States and other "developed" nations do, it's not going to
curb global climate change, according to one scientist who was once highly skeptical of the entire issue of global warming. ¶ "Call me
a converted skeptic," physicist Richard A. Muller says in an op-ed piece published in the New York Times last July.¶ Muller's latest
book, "Energy for Future Presidents," attempts to poke holes in nearly everything we've been told about energy and climate change,
except the fact that "humans are almost entirely the cause" of global warming.¶ Those of us who live in the "developed" world
initiated it. Those who live in the "developing" world will sustain it as they strive for a standard of living equal to ours. ¶ "As far as
global warming is concerned, the developed world is becoming irrelevant," Muller insists in his book. We could set an example by
curbing our emissions, and thus claim in the future that "it wasn't our fault," but about the only thing that could stop it would be a
complete economic collapse in China and the rest of the world's developing countries.¶ As they race forward, their industrial growth
-- and their greenhouse gas emissions -- will outpace any efforts by the West to reduce their carbon footprints, Muller contends.¶
"China has been installing a new gigawatt of coal power each week," he says in his Times piece, and each plant pumps an additional
ton of gases into the atmosphere "every second."¶ "By the time you read this, China's yearly greenhouse gas emissions will be double
those of the United States, perhaps higher," he contends. And that's not likely to change.¶ "China is fighting poverty, malnutrition,
hunger, poor health, inadequate education and limited opportunity. If you were the president of China, would you endanger
progress to avoid a few degrees of temperature change?" he asks.¶ Muller suggests a better course for the West to take than
condemning China for trying to be like the rest of us. Instead, we should encourage China to switch from coal to natural gas for its
power plants, which would cut those emissions in half.¶ "Coal," he writes, "is the filthiest fuel we have."¶ Meanwhile, the West
waits for a silver bullet , possibly a geo-engineering solution that would make global warming go away by reflecting
sunlight back into space, or fertilizing the oceans so they could absorb more carbon dioxide, or something we haven't even heard
about. Don't expect it anytime soon.¶ It would take a bold, and perhaps foolish, nation to take over the complex
systems that control the planet's weather patterns. That's sort of what we did beginning with the Industrial Revolution. Now we have
to live with it.¶ So maybe Knight and Harrison are right. It's time to pay more attention to how we are going to handle changes to
our planet that seem
inevitable.¶ We can fight global warming and try to mitigate the consequences , but it
isn't going to go away.
Plan competes with resources for adaptation – tradeoffs guaranteed

World Bank Institute 11 (“Global Dialogue on Climate Resilient Cities”, Summary of the
main issues arising in the WBI dialogue on climate resilient cities held on 26 May 2011,
http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/Data/wbi/wbicms/files/drupal-
acquia/wbi/WBI%20Global%20Dialogue%20on%20Climate%20Resilient%20Cities%20-
%20summary%20of%20emerging%20issues.pdf
“Climate resilience” doesn’t obviate the hard choices cities have to make between service delivery,
economic development, and adaptation and mitigation actions.¶ A climate resilient city is one that copes not only with
climate change and its impacts through adaptation and mitigation activities, but is also able to position itself appropriately in a
future low carbon economy. Conceived this way, climate resilience is not about returning to some idealised pre-climate change state,
but rather a phase shift into a new low carbon future - a transformative process described by Debra Roberts7 as “bouncing
forward”.¶ But forcing an artificial unity between mitigation and adaptation agendas obfuscates
difficult tradeoffs between competing priorities . For these reasons, it may be more important to
highlight the tradeoffs that must be made, and transparently negotiate who wins and loses in the process. This highlights the role of
leadership and democratic governance, especially in weakly resourced localities.
Resources finite – plan trades-off

IPCC 7 (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, Climate Change 2007:
Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change,
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch11s11-9.html, CMR)
At the national level, mitigation and adaptation are often cast as competing priorities for policy
makers (Cohen et al., 1998; Michaelowa, 2001). In other words, interest groups will fight about the limited
funds available in a country for addressing climate change, providing analyses of how countries might then make
optimal decisions about the appropriate adaptation-mitigation ‘mix’. Using a public choice model, Michaelowa (2001) finds that
mitigation will be preferred by societies with a strong climate protection industry and low mitigation costs. Public pressure for
adaptation will depend on the occurrence of extreme weather events. As technical adaptation measures will lead to benefits for
closely-knit, clearly defined groups who can organize themselves well in the political process, these will benefit from subsidy-
financed programmes. Changes in society will become less attractive as benefits are spread more widely.
2nc – link – renewables**
Increased support for wind/solar directly tradesoff with more

effective adaptation solutions – their impacts are exaggerated hype
Lomborg ’13 – director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Washington, D.C. (“Bjorn
Lomborg: Climate-Change Misdirection”, 1/23,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323485704578258172660564886.html,
CMR)
In his second inaugural address on Monday, President Obama laudably promised to "respond to the threat of climate change." Unfortunately, when the
president described the urgent nature of the threat—the "devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms"—the
scary examples suggested that he is contemplating poor policies that don't point to any real, let alone smart, solutions. Global warming is a
problem that needs fixing, but exaggeration doesn't help, and it often distracts us from simple, cheaper and
smarter solutions.¶ For starters, let's address the three horsemen of the climate apocalypse that Mr. Obama mentioned.¶ Historical analysis of
wildfires around the world shows that since 1950 their numbers have decreased globally by 15%. Estimates published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences show that even with global warming proceeding uninterrupted, the level of wildfires will continue to decline until around
midcentury and won't resume on the level of 1950—the worst for fire—before the end of the century.¶ Claiming that droughts are a consequence of
global warming is also wrong. The world has not seen a general increase in drought. A study published in Nature in November shows globally that
"there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years." The U.N. Climate Panel in 2012 concluded: "Some regions of the world have
experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less
frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia."¶ As for one of the favorites of alarmism,
hurricanes in recent years don't indicate that storms are getting worse. Measured by total energy (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), hurricane activity is at
a low not encountered since the 1970s. The U.S. is currently experiencing the longest absence of severe landfall hurricanes in over a century—the last
Category 3 or stronger storm was Wilma, more than seven years ago. ¶ While it is likely that we will see somewhat stronger (but fewer) storms as climate
change continues, a March 2012 Nature study shows that the global damage cost from hurricanes will go to 0.02% of gross domestic product annually
in 2100 from 0.04% today—a drop of 50%, despite global warming.¶ This does not mean that climate change isn't an issue. It means that
exaggerating the threat concentrates resources in the wrong areas. Consider hurricanes
(though similar points hold for wildfire and drought). If the aim is to reduce storm damage, then first focus on resilience—better building
codes and better enforcement of those codes. Ending subsidies for hurricane insurance to discourage building in vulnerable zones would also help, as
would investing in better infrastructure (from stronger levees to higher-capacity sewers).¶ These solutions are quick and
comparatively cheap. Most important, they would diminish future hurricane damage, whether climate-induced or not. Had New York and
New Jersey focused resources on building sea walls and adding storm doors to the subway system and making simple fixes like porous pavements,
Hurricane Sandy would have caused much less damage. ¶ In the long run, the world needs to cut carbon dioxide because it causes global warming. But
if the main effort to cut emissions is through subsidies for chic renewables like wind and solar power,
virtually no good will be achieved — at very high cost . The cost of climate policies just for the European
Union—intended to reduce emissions by 2020 to 20% below 1990 levels—are estimated at about $250 billion annually. And the benefits, when
estimated using a standard climate model, will reduce temperature only by an immeasurable one-tenth of a
degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.¶ Even in 2035, with the most optimistic scenario, the International Energy
Agency estimates that just 2.4% of the world's energy will come from wind and only 1% from solar. As is the case today, almost 80% will still come from
fossil fuels. As long as green energy is more expensive than fossil fuels, growing consumer markets like those in China and India will continue to use
them, despite what well-meaning but broke Westerners try to do.¶ Instead
of pouring money into subsidies and direct
production support of existing, inefficient green energy, President Obama should focus on dramatically ramping up
investments into the research and development of green energy. Put another way, it is the difference between supporting an inexpensive researcher
who will discover more efficient, future solar panels—and supporting a Solyndra at great expense to produce lots of inefficient, present-technology solar
panels.¶ When innovation eventually makes green energy cheaper, everyone will implement it, including the Chinese. Such a policy would likely do 500
times more good per dollar invested than current subsidy schemes. But first let's drop the fear-mongering
exaggeration —and then focus on innovation.
2nc – link – growth
C02 is good – climate reduction policies collapse economic growth
Ferrara 14 (Peter, **Graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, senior fellow for
entitlement and budget policy @ Heartland, senior fellow at the Social Security Institute, White
House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, Associate Deputy Attorney
General of the United States under the first President Bush**, “The Period Of No Global
Warming Will Soon Be Longer Than the Period of Actual Global Warming,” 2/24,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2014/02/24/the-period-of-no-global-warming-will-
soon-be-longer-than-the-period-of-actual-global-warming/, CMR)
The Obama Administration is busily at work on a project to define what it is calling “the social cost of carbon.” But the
only
documented effect of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide so far is the resulting
increased agricultural output, valued in one study at $1.3 trillion . The Obama Administration is effectively
conducting a cost-benefit analysis with no consideration of the benefits. Note that this project is being conducted on a planet
populated by what is known as “carbon-based” life forms. That includes plants, animals, and marine life. The biggest
problem with the catastrophic, anthropogenic, global warming fantasy is that it is very costly
for the economy . It is already delaying the Keystone Pipeline, which is privately financed infrastructure that would
produce thousands of good paying jobs. Should be a no-brainer. The Administration’s policies are also sharply restricting the
production of oil and gas on federally controlled lands. Then there is the Administration’s War on Coal, which threatens thousands
of more jobs. Perhaps most importantly, reliable supplies of low cost energy powerfully promote
economic growth. Already burgeoning supplies of inexpensive natural gas resulting from the fracking revolution on state
and private lands are stimulating a budding revival of American manufacturing. But the whole point of the
EPA’s global warming regulation would be to impose a cost wedge on the traditional carbon based energy sources that have powered
the industrial revolution – coal, oil and natural gas. Alternative energy from wind, solar, even biofuels is inherently more costly
because the energy in wind, sunrays, corn, etc. is much more diffuse, so more expensive to collect in usable form. Moreover, these
alternative energy sources are inherently unreliable, because sometimes the wind does not blow, and the sun does not shine. So back
up traditional fossil fuel sources are still needed, which further adds to the costs. This will all result in higher costs for electricity, the
fundamental power source for the modern, consumer based economy. The science of global warming as discussed above
does not justify these costs for the economy.
2nc – adaptation shields impact
Adaptation empirically effective – solves all their impacts
Lomborg 10 – adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, founded and directs
the Copenhagen Consensus Center (Bjorn, “Cost-effective ways to address climate change”, Nov
17, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111604973.html, CMR)
The process is called adaptation, and it's something we humans are very good at. That isn't surprising, since we've
been doing it for millennia. As climate economist Richard Tol notes, our ability to adapt to widely varying
climates explains how people live happily at both the equator and the poles. In the debate over global warming, in
which some have argued that civilization as we know it is at stake, this is an important point. Humankind is not
completely at the mercy of nature . To the contrary, when it comes to dealing with the impact of
climate change, we've compiled a pretty impressive track record. While this doesn't mean we can afford to
ignore climate change, it provides a powerful reason not to panic about it either.
There is no better example of how human ingenuity can literally keep our heads above water than the
Netherlands. Although a fifth of their country lies below sea level - and fully half is less than three feet above it - the Dutch maintain
an enormously productive economy and enjoy one of the world's highest standards of living. The secret is a centuries-old system of
dikes, supplemented in recent decades by an elaborate network of floodgates and other barriers. All this adaptation is not
only effective but also amazingly inexpensive. Keeping Holland protected from any future sea-level rises for the
next century will cost only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
Coping with rising sea levels is hardly the only place where low-cost, high-impact adaptation strategies can make a huge difference.
One of the most pernicious impacts of global warming is the extent to which it exacerbates the phenomenon known as the urban
"heat island effect" - the fact that because they lack greenery and are chockablock with heat-absorbing black surfaces such as tar
roofs and asphalt roads, urban areas tend to be much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Ultimately, we're not going to solve
any of these problems until we figure out a way to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But in the meantime, there are simple adaptive measures we can employ to cool down our cities:
We can paint them. Hashem Akbari, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab oratory who
specializes in cost-effective methods of combating the effects of climate change in urban areas, has shown that by painting
roofs white, covering asphalt roadways with concrete-colored surfaces and planting shade trees,
local temperatures could be reduced by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Akbari and colleagues reported in
the journal Climatic Change last year that for every 100 square feet of black rooftop converted to white surface, the effects of roughly
one ton of carbon dioxide would be offset.
Painting streets and rooftops white may sound impractical, if not silly, but it's a realistic strategy - which is to say, it's effective and
affordable. Indeed, for an initial expenditure of $1 billion, we could lighten enough Los Angeles streets and rooftops to reduce
temperatures in the L.A. Basin more than global warming would increase them over the next 90 years.
Obviously, whether it involves dikes or buckets of white paint, adaptation is not a long-term solution to global warming. Rather,
it willenable us to get by while we figure out the best way to address the root causes of man-
made climate change. This may not seem like much, but at a time when fears of a supposedly imminent apocalypse threaten
to swamp rational debate about climate policy, it's worth noting that coping with climate change is something we
know how to do .
Default to empirics over alarmism

Moore 8/9/12 – PhD in ecology from the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology, U of British
Columbia (Patrick, former environmental activist, known as one of the early members of
Greenpeace, in which he was an activist from 1971 to 1986, co-founder, chair, and chief scientist
of Greenspirit Strategies in Vancouver, “Patrick Moore on the facts and fiction of climate
change”, http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/conscience-
realist/2012/aug/9/patrick-moore-facts-and-fiction-climate-change/, CMR)
Cotto: Across the world, untold millions are very nervous about global warming. Do you believe it really is the sort of
threat that many perceive it to be? Why or why not? Dr. Moore: No . I do not believe alarmism and
fear are the correct responses even if our emissions are causing some warming. In particular I do not believe it makes
sense to adopt policies that would obviously cause more harm that the supposed "catastrophe" that might be caused by warming.
The proposal to end fossil fuel use in a short time frame with no alternative is a classic example. Many of the so-called "cures" for
climate change would cause more damage to the patient that the so-called "disease". The climate has been considerably
warmer throughout the history of modern life (550 million years) for most of the time than it is today.
These were the Greenhouse Ages, often lasting 100 million years or more, when all the land was either tropical or subtropical. Not
that many millions of years ago Canada's Arctic islands were covered in sub-tropical forests. There was no ice at either pole. The sea
was considerably higher. Life flourished through these times. They will say that humans are not adapted to such a warm climate,
ignoring the fact that humans are a tropical species, and would not be able to live where there is frost
without fire, clothing, and shelter.
--Adaptation solves your impacts ---- empirical evidence proves

Michaels ‘7 [Patrick, Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies @ Cato and Prof. Environmental Sciences
@ UVA, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Global Warming: No Urgent Danger; No Quick Fix”, 8-21,
http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8651]
We certainly adapted to 0.8 C temperature change quite well in the 20th century, as life expectancy
doubled and some crop yields quintupled. And who knows what new and miraculously efficient power sources will
develop in the next hundred years. The stories about the ocean rising 20 feet as massive amounts of ice slide off
of Greenland by 2100 are also fiction. For the entire half century from 1915 through 1965, Greenland was
significantly warmer than it has been for the last decade. There was no disaster. More important, there's a large
body of evidence that for much of the period from 3,000 to 9,000 years ago, at least the Eurasian Arctic was 2.5 C to 7 C warmer
than now in the summer, when ice melts. Greenland's ice didn't disappear then, either. Then there is the topic of interest this time of
year — hurricanes. Will hurricanes become stronger or more frequent because of warming? My own work
suggests that late in the 21st century there might be an increase in strong storms, but that it will be very
hard to detect because of year-to-year variability. Right now, after accounting for increasing coastal population and
property values, there is no increase in damages caused by these killers. The biggest of them all was the Great Miami Hurricane of
1926. If it occurred today, it would easily cause twice as much damage as 2005's vaunted Hurricane Katrina. So let's get real and give
the politically incorrect answers to global warming's inconvenient questions. Global warming is real, but it does not
portend immediate disaster, and there's currently no suite of technologies that can do much about it. The obvious
solution is to forgo costs today on ineffective attempts to stop it, and to save our money for investment in
future technologies and inevitable adaptation.
--Warming won’t cause massive deaths—humans adapt.

Michaels and Balling ‘9
Patrick, professor of environmental sciences @ The University of Virginia and a senior fellow in the environmental studies at the
CATO institute; Robert, professor in the climatology program in the School of Geographical Sciences at @ASU. “Climate of
Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know” pgs 178-180
There is no question that the heat wave of 2003 was a natural disaster in Europe with a substantial loss of human life.
Europe was not prepared for an event that, from a purely statistical view point, was inevitable, with or without global
warming. In 2006, another article appeared in the International Journal of Biometeorology that put the 2003 disaster in
perspective. Mohamed Laaidi and two coauthors, from the Medical University at Dijon, France, examined daily temperature and
mortality data from 1991-95 for six "departments" (a.k.a., states or counties) located in urban, oceanic, interior, mountain, and two
different Mediterranean settings (Figure 6.2). They broke the data into three age groups including less than 1 year old, 1 to 64 years
old, and greater than 64 years old. They also divided the data by sex and by major causes of death including respiratory disease,
cardiovascular disease or stroke, heart disease, and other diseases of the circulatory system. Murders and accidents were excluded.
The Laaidi et al, team found that for the whole population As expected, temperature and daily deaths exhibited a
marked temporal pattern. For all the departments investi- gated, mean daily counts of deaths showed an
asymmetrical V-like or If-like pattern with higher mortality rates at the time of the lowest temperatures
experienced in the area than at the tune of the highest temperatures. The data also clearly showed that
people adjust to their environments. Individuals living in cold regions experience more mortality in warm temperatures,
and those from warm areas are more susceptible to cold Ones. There is also a range in temperature, called the thermal optimum, in
which mortality is low; the authors noted: The level of the thermal optimum rises in line with the warmer climatic conditions of each
department. The thermal optimum is greater in Paris, probably due to the urban heat island, than in the Herault, which is situated in
the extreme south of France in a Mediterranean climate. In other words, here's the shocking news: People adjust to the
climate in which they reside. In Meltdown, one of us (Michaels) cited work he had done with Robert Davis at the University of
Virginia in which they found that heat-related mortality declined as cities get warmer, which cities do with or
without global warming. The same phenomenon was seen by Laaidi et al., except they added in the adjustment for cold
climates, showing less mortality there from cold waves than occurs when temperatures fall dramatically in warm climates.
Concerning any temperature rise for any reason, Laaidi et al. found: "For both men and women mortality was higher at
low temperatures, suggesting a lesser ability to adapt to the cold." On the basis of another related study, they state,
"In England and Wales, the higher temperatures predicted for 2050 might result in nearly 9,000 fewer winter deaths each year."
Laaidi et al. conclude: "Our findings give grounds for confidence in the near future: the relatively moderate (2'C) [3.6'F] warming
predicted to occur in the next half century would not increase annual mortality rates." Computer models for
carbon dioxide-induced global warming consistently predict more warming in winter in midlatitude locations such as France and
less warming in the summer. The Laaidi et al, study shows that the greater threat of human mortality lies in the cold end of the
thermal spectrum rather than the warm end. Higher temperatures in the winter would certainly decrease
mortality, and we could conclude from this and other studies that in terms of temperature-related
mortality, global warming would save lives - a message not well conveyed in the hundreds of thousands of websites on
the subject.
--Adaptation minimizes their impacts

Thus, at least through 2085-2100, global warming may relieve some of the problems that some developing
countries face currently (e.g., water shortage and habitat loss), while in other instances, the contribution of global
warming to the overall problem (e.g., cumula¬tive mortality from malaria, hunger, and coastal flooding) would be
substantially smaller than that of factors unrelated to global warming. Notably, economic development,
one of the fundamental drivers of global wanning, would reduce mortality problems regardless of whether they are due to warming
or non-warming-related factors. Hence, the lack of economic development would be a greater prob¬lem than global warming, at
least through 2085-2100. This outcome is consistent with Figure 6.7, which shows that notwithstanding global warming and despite
egregiously overestimating the negative consequences of global warming, future net GDP per capita will be much higher than it is
today under each scenario through at least 2200. [179]
--Their impacts are hype and adaptation solves

Clearly, the direction of long-term empirical trends for aggregate hunger, disease, deaths from droughts, floods, and
extreme weather events is inconsistent with expectations based on the general narrative regarding the effects
of global warming. While the surface temperature has increased by approximately 0.7 degree Celsius since
1900 according to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report,1"1 the agencies responsible for anthropogenic
greenhouse gas emissions are, in fact, directly or indirectly responsible for reducing climate-sensitive risks
faster than they are being created or exacerbated. This reduction is manifested as increases in adaptive
capacity, which then increases human well-being either directly or indirectly. An alternative (and devastating)
possibility is that the narrative is simply based on false expectations . For the purposes of this chapter, whichever of
these explanations (or combination of explanations) is correct is immaterial. The salient fact is that empirical reality does not
match claims about deteriorating human well-being due to global warming.
--Adaptation solves [their impact but not our turns]

Goklany ‘7 – PhD, science and tech policy analyst for the US Dept of the Interior
Indur M, M.S. and Ph.D are from Michigan State University, “the improving state of the world”, page
number below in [brackets]
The best one can do through mitigation is to halt climate change at its 1990 level. Table 10.7 shows that would,
by 2085, reduce the TPAR for malaria and hunger by 3.2 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively. It would also reduce TPAR for
coastal flooding by 86.2 percent, based on a sea level rise of 0.41 meter between 1990 and 2085. However, there is no guarantee that
mitigation will not increase the net population at risk for water stress. Although the cost of freezing climate at its 1990
level has never been estimated, it would be astronomical compared to the cost of the Kyoto Protocol, which is estimated at
$165 billion in 2010. However, measures implemented today and focused on reducing current vulnerabilities to these
climate-sensitive hazards would, throught 2085, provide greater aggregate benefits than halting climate
change, but at less than a tenth of the cost of the Kyoto Protocol: • At an additional cost of $3 billion per year, malaria's current
global death toll of about 1 million per year can be reduced by 75 percent. These expenditures may have to be doubled
by 2085 to keep pace with the projected increase in the global population at risk in the absence of climate change. • An additional $5
billion annual investment in agricultural research and development should raise productivity sufficiently to not
only erase any climate change-caused deficit in agricultural production in 2085 but also reduce the PAR
in the absence of climate change. If such technologies are brought to fruition, that would also help conserve water, as well as
habitat and migratory corridors, thereby reducing the pressure on both water resources and biodiversity. • An annual
investment of $1 billion per year is sufficient to protect coastal areas against a 0.5 meter sea level rise in
2100. Not only does focused adaptation provide a greater target of opportunity than mitigation—because it would act on both the
climate change and the non-climate change-related components of TPAR while mitigation would only affect the climate change-
related - component—the economics favor it as well. There are other advantages associated with focused adaptation. First, it will
not only reduce present-day climate-sensitive problems, it will also help reduce these problems in the future, whether
they are caused by climate change or other factors. This is because the technologies, practices, systems, and human and social capital
devised to cope with these problems today will aid societies coping with these problems in the future. Second, it can be implemented
without detailed knowledge of the impacts of climate change. In other words, it can be proactive with respect to climate change.
Cases in point are the development of malaria vaccines, drought-resistant crops, transferable property rights for water resources, or
early warning systems for climate-sensitive events ranging from storms to potential epidemics of various kinds. Third, focused
adaptation will start to provide a steady stream of benefits in the very near term while, because of the inertia of the climate system,
the benefits of mitigation will not be significant until decades have elapsed. This would be fine except that there are plenty of
unsolved problems that afflict current generations that could use the economic and human resources that might otherwise be
diverted toward mitigation. Fourth, mitigation would indiscriminately reduce all impacts of climate change,
whether they are positive or negative. But adaptation can capture the positive aspects of climate change, while
reducing its negatives. Fifth, while the impacts of global warming are uncertain, there is no doubt that
malaria, hunger, water shortages, and coastal flooding are real and urgent problems here and now. Thus,
focused adaptation is far more likely to deliver benefits than is mitigation , as well as to deliver those benefits
sooner rather than later. Not least, ancillary benefits of adaptation focused on reducing vulnerability to malaria and hunger include
better health, increased economic growth, and greater human capital, which should advance human well-being and the capacity to
address a much wider variety of problems, in addition to climate change. These benefits, in fact, are among the goals and purposes of
sustainable development, as explicitly articulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Several measures to reduce
hunger and water shortage would also provide benefits by enhancing agricultural productivity per unit of
land and water. In turn, that would reduce human demand for agricultural land and water, which currently is the greatest threat
to both terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity and is likely to remain so through the foreseeable future. It would also aid mitigation
by Kmiting land under cultivation thereby reducing losses of carbon stores and sinks and the socioeconomic costs of reserving land
for conservation or carbon sequestration. These benefits would, moreover, advance sustainable development in their own right.
Finally, the conclusion that focused adaptation is for the foreseeable future superior in terms of both global
benefits and global costs is robust to the choice of discount rates, including a zero discount rate. This is because
the benefits of focused adaptation will generally follow relatively soon after its costs are incurred. The
climate system's inertia, however, ensures that costs of emission reductions will have to be borne for
decades before any benefits are accrued. [page 334-336]
2nc – agriculture
Focus on reducing warming trades-off with more effective solutions
to solve famine
Lomborg ’11 [Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, director
of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School, (retrieved
4/22/2011), http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2011/Climate-
Action/Food_Security_Solutions/EN/index.htm, CMR
We are often told that global warming is soon going to make it impossible to feed the planet.
This dramatic overstatement of the truth leads us to focus on the wrong solutions .
When the Copenhagen Consensus Center convened a panel of Nobel Laureates to identify the best
investments that could be made to help the planet, they highlighted incredibly cheap, highly
effective ways to fight malnutrition, such as micronutrient supplementation, micronutrient fortification, biofortification, and community nutrition
programmes. Sadly, in the developed world we do not hear enough about these solutions – or even about
this challenge. When we do focus on hunger, we often see it through the wrong lens.
Focus on adaptation key to agriculture

Lomborg ’11 – directs the Copenhagen Consensus Center and is an adjunct professor at
Copenhagen Business School (Bjorn, “Global Warming and Adaptability”, Dec 12,
CMR)
When it comes to access to food, global warming is expected to be responsible for a 7% yield
decrease in the developing world and a 3% yield increase in the developed world over this
century. Yet this needs to be seen in the context of total developing world food production rising by about 270% over the same
period.¶ Do we better help the developing world by making drastic carbon cuts today that might—in
an ideal world—avoid a 7% yield drop, or by making higher-yielding varieties of crops available
that could potentially generate drastic yield increases ? These are questions we have to answer if we are to
adapt to the reality of global warming in this century.¶ The first step in focusing on adaptation is measuring it.
The Global Adaptation Institute, led by former World Bank Managing Director Juan Jose Daboub, publishes the Global Adaptation
Index, which shows how vulnerable countries are to global warming and how prepared they are to tackle it. The challenge lies not
merely in reducing vulnerability but also in getting the structures in place so governments and investors can tackle adaptation in the
most effective manner possible. The good news is we can improve lives today while building the crucial
infrastructure needed for tomorrow.¶ The climate will continue changing throughout this
century. And we do need to fix carbon emissions smartly through technological innovation. But if our concern is with
saving lives and helping the planet's most vulnerable populations, then we need to focus first
on how we can build more resilient, adaptable communities.
2nc – agriculture – co2 shield
Focused adaptation captures the benefits of warming, including co2
fertilization
Yetanother benefit of the adaptive approaches is that they allow societies¶ to take advantage of the
positive consequences of higher carbon dioxide¶ concentrations and global warming (e.g., higher crop
productivity due¶ to carbon fertilization, longer growing seasons in some areas, or lower¶ water stress in some
heavily populated areas—see Figure 7). On the¶ other hand, mitigation indiscriminately reduces both the positive and the¶ negative impacts
associated with global warming. Essentially the adaptive¶ approaches are scalpels compared to
mitigation, which is necessarily a¶ meat axe.
Focused adaptation captures the benefits of warming while solving their impacts
Goklany & Morris 12/7/11 – Ph.D. is an author and a research who was associated with the IPCC for 20 years, expert
reviewer and U.S. delegate to that organization AND VP of research at the Reason Foundation, a non-profit think tank (Indur M,
AND Julian, “How the IPCC Reports Mislead the Public, Exaggerate the Negative Impacts of Climate Change and Ignore the Benefits
of Economic Growth”, http://reason.org/files/how_ipcc_misleads_on_climate_change_impacts.pdf, CMR)
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which would reduce every warming impact regardless of whether it is good or bad, is
but one approach to dealing with the consequences of warming. And it would likely be very costly. In fact, reducing
emissions is unlikely to help poorer countries deal with most of the problems they face either today or in
the future. With respect to mortality from hunger, malaria and extreme events, for example, global warming is
estimated to contribute to only 13% of the problem in 2085. Another approach to reducing the impact of
global warming would be to reduce the climate sensitive problems of poverty through “focused adaptation.” This might
involve, for example, major investments in early warning systems, the development of new crop varieties,
and public health interventions. Focused adaptation would allow society to capture the benefits of global
warming while allowing it to reduce climate-sensitive problems that global warming might worsen. For
instance, emission reductions would at most reduce mortality from hunger, malaria and extreme events by only 13%, whereas
focused adaptation could essentially eliminate these causes of mortality.
2nc – econ
Privileging focus on adaptation key to sustain economic growth
Lomborg 9 – adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, founded and directs the
Copenhagen Consensus Center (Bjørn, “Adapting to Climate Change”, Aug 24,
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/adapting-to-climate-change, CMR)
Simple economic models, often quoted in the media, show that unconstrained global warming would cost a substantial 2% of GDP in the rich world by
Taking adaptation
the end of the century. But this fails to acknowledge that people will change their behavior when the environment changes.
into account, rich countries will adapt to the negative consequences of global warming and
exploit the positive changes, creating a total positive effect of global warming worth about 0.1%
of GDP.¶ Poor countries will be hit harder, however. Adaptation will reduce the climate change-related losses from 5% of GDP to slightly less than
3% – but this is still a significant impact. The real challenge of global warming, therefore, lies in tackling its impact on the Third World. Here, more
needs to be done, above and beyond the adaptation that will happen naturally. ¶ Importantly, the new research shows that adaptation
would
achieve a lot more than cuts in carbon emissions. Reducing emissions to a level that does not
extinguish economic growth could avert $3 trillion worth of damage, whereas adaptation could
prevent around $8 trillion worth of damage . For every dollar spent on adaptation, we
would achieve about $1.70 worth of positive changes for the planet.¶ The economic case for
focusing more on adaptation is clear . The crucial next step is to ensure that economic arguments become a stronger
part of our political debate about how to address global warming.
2nc – hurricanes**
Focus on adaptation key to Hurricane resilience
Lomborg ’13 – director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Washington, D.C. (“Bjorn
Lomborg: Climate-Change Misdirection”, 1/23,
CMR)
Consider hurricanes (though similar points hold for wildfire and drought). If the aim is to reduce storm
damage, then first focus on resilience —better building codes and better enforcement of those
codes. Ending subsidies for hurricane insurance to discourage building in vulnerable zones would also help, as would investing in
better infrastructure (from stronger levees to higher-capacity sewers).¶ These solutions are quick and comparatively
cheap. Most important, they would diminish future hurricane damage, whether climate-induced or not. Had
New York and New Jersey focused resources on building sea walls and adding storm doors to
the subway system and making simple fixes like porous pavements, Hurricane Sandy would
have caused much less damage.¶
Impact is insurance crash

Legget 6 [Jeremy, Guardian/PhD at Oxford, Jul 27, “Dodging bullets too long,”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jul/27/dejavu] CMR
The insurance industry takes well over a trillion dollars in annual premiums. It is second only to tourism in income terms. Much of
this income is invested. Several hundred billion dollars is retained for property catastrophe losses, which mainly involve earthquakes
and climatic disasters. Though losses in recent years have been unprecedented, they have not exceeded a quarter of the reserve pot
in any one year. But in a warming world, disasters are likely to be more numerous and more intense. To date, somewhat amazingly,
Hurricane Katrina is the only climate catastrophe to have hit a city in a developed country The insurance industry has been dodging
bullets for years. The worst-case scenario for insurers works like this. The dice finally roll unkindly. A full-blown hurricane
hits, say, New York. A drought-related wildfire then sweeps into Los Angeles. It would take only a few mega-
castrophes of this kind to drain the industry's property catastrophe reserve . A machine
gunfire of smaller catastrophes could have the same effect. Even on current bullet-dodging trends, one of the
industry's most eminent climate experts, Andrew Dlugolecki, has warned that in a world doing nothing about greenhouse gas
emissions, net wealth destruction would exceed net wealth creation by 2065 or thereabouts, even
without a crash in the world economy. What
has the insurance industry done about this threat to its
profitability and indeed very survival ? Virtually nothing. A few representatives have dropped into the climate talks
since 1995 for a day at a time. Not a single full-time lobbyist has been deployed, even though the fossil-fuel industries deploy
hundreds, all of them to differing degrees trying to keep us locked into the suicidal status quo. Some companies joined an initiative
set up by the UN environment programme (Unep). Despite Unep's best efforts, it has become a talking shop where meaningful
action is far from the agenda. A very few companies have instigated unilateral initiatives, among them Swiss Re, which has built a
small portfolio of clean energy investments. With these and a few other exceptions, the industry is asleep at the wheel of a
juggernaut accelerating towards a cliff edge. The insurance industry is at its most dysfunctional when it comes to investment. Most
of the climate-risk whistleblowers come from underwriting departments. They are the people who understand risk. The investment
departments, meanwhile, behave as though global warming has no price implications whatsoever. Much of their vast income they
invest in energy, and almost all the energy investments they make are in fossil fuels - the main source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The insurance industry is throwing a suicidal Mississippi river of capital at the very industries, companies and technologies that fuel
(quite literally) the global warming threat to its profitability. I have been saying since 1993 that this situation cannot last, and I still
believe that it cannot last. But the collective irresponsibility of the insurance industry now beggars belief. Acting as though global
warming is a problem unworthy of a price tag in 2002 has become somewhat akin to saying that the world is flat. It cannot be long
before a shareholder collects every scientific report on climate change over the last decade and sends them in a package to every
director of an insurance company with a letter asking what the company is doing to safeguard his or her investment. The answer, as
things stand, would be hilarious, if it were not so tragic. An interesting lawsuit could be not far behind. Of course, the industry can
introduce fancy risk-hedging financial strategies, and to a degree already has. But it could also belatedly begin the process of risk
abatement by seriously investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency. This, after all, involves markets that are growing fast,
even in the current investment climate. But increasingly the insurance industry is reminiscent of the Bismark: the ship is
ablaze already, without much of a rudder, and any day now, global warming could provide the salvos that sink it.
And global economic collapse
Legget ’96 [Jeremy, PhD at Oxford, Climate Change and the Financial Sector, p. 44] CMR
A global insurance crash, in other words. The point is that the putative two events – a category five hurricane on New York, say, or a
drought-related wildfire taking hold in an urban centre – become more likely in a world where global warming is taking off. Neither
is the worst-case limited to a small number of unkind rolls of the climatic dice: as one Swiss Re analyst has put it, we could end up
seeing “a machine-gun fire” of catastrophe. In the wake of a global insurance crash, the knock-on problems
in economies would be huge. The economic problems of small island states, where insurers have
in many cases withdrawn cover or hiked rates to unaffordable levels, offer a partial microosm.
Without insurance, building programmes could not be commissioned, businesses could not start
up; others would be forced to shut down as insurance expired and losses of whatever previously-
insurable type mounted. Unemployment would ripple through the economy, starting
spectacularly in the labour-intensive insurance industry itself.
Nuclear war
Cesare Merlini 11, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe
and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Italian Institute for International Affairs, May
2011, “A Post-Secular World?”, Survival, Vol. 53, No. 2, CMR
Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of oversimplification. The first
scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One
or more of the acute tensions apparent
today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the
use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global
economic and financial system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second
Great Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first.
Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and
rejection of outside interference would self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be amplified,
emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union. Many of the more likely
conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related
to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar
issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or
another, the secular
rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes ,
competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.
2nc – at: warming too fast
Extend Goklany – adaptation can occur rapidly – their evidence underesimates current
and future capabilities
This cuts both ways – if warming is too fast for adaptation, any solution – including the aff
– can’t solve in time – especially their internal link which is extremely long-term – vote neg
on presumption

Adaptation DA DDDDDDDDD

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One challenge to implementation of adaptation actions is the competition with mitigation

Focused adaptation solves their impacts best while avoiding global

PAR = populations- at-risk

Resource crises cause extinction

Malaria kills half the world

Alongside tuberculosis (TB) and AIDS, malaria

Disease causes extinction

Top-experts agree adaptation focus is superior – solves their impact

temperature increase at the end of the century by an immeasurable one-hundredth of a degree

Can’t solve warming or its effects, but adaptation checks

Even with zero emissions

mitigate the consequences , but it isn't going to go away.

It’s irreversible – feedbacks, China, natural gas

Multiple studies confirm

30-year time lag – any effect takes decades

Focus on adaptation in the SQUO – ensures resilience

Humanity will adapt to warming – efforts are already started

Major international attention to adaptation now

International efforts to promote adaptation underway – allows us to

Prefer our evidence – their authors ignore new tech

Adaptation will continue in the SQUO

--This is obviously stupid

“Silver bullet” energy solutions trade-off with adaptation

Plan competes with resources for adaptation – tradeoffs guaranteed

Resources finite – plan trades-off

Increased support for wind/solar directly tradesoff with more

Default to empirics over alarmism

--Adaptation solves your impacts ---- empirical evidence proves

--Warming won’t cause massive deaths—humans adapt.

--Adaptation minimizes their impacts

--Their impacts are hype and adaptation solves

--Adaptation solves [their impact but not our turns]

Focus on adaptation key to agriculture

Impact is insurance crash

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