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General Impact Extensions
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- [This impact kinda sucks, but I didn’t have another one besides Khalilzad ‘95]
- Grid shutdown --- extinction
- Food prices --- global war
General Impact ExtensionsSebastian cites several specific scenarios they’ve dropped --- First, the economy --- extinction Austin ‘09 (Michael, Resident Scholar – American Enterprise Institute, and Desmond Lachman, Resident Fellow – American Enterprise Institute, “The Global Economy Unravels”, Forbes, 3-6, http://www.aei.org/article/100187) Conversely, global policymakers do not seem to have grasped the downside risks to the global economy posed by a deteriorating domestic and international political environment. If the past is any guide, the souring of the political environment must be expected to fan the corrosive protectionist tendencies and nationalistic economic policy responses that are already all too much in evidence. After spending much of 2008 cheerleading the global economy, the International Monetary Fund now concedes that output in the world's advanced economies is expected to contract by as much as 2% in 2009. This would be the first time in the post-war period that output contracted in all of the world's major economies. The IMF is also now expecting only a very gradual global economic recovery in 2010, which will keep global unemployment at a high level. Sadly, the erstwhile rapidly growing emerging-market economies will not be spared by the ravages of the global recession. Output is already declining precipitously across Eastern and Central Europe as well as in a number of key Asian economies, like South Korea and Thailand. A number of important emerging-market countries like Ukraine seem to be headed for debt default, while a highly oil-dependent Russia seems to be on the cusp of a full-blown currency crisis. Perhaps of even greater concern is the virtual grinding to a halt of economic growth in China. The IMF now expects that China's growth rate will approximately halve to 6% in 2009. Such a growth rate would fall far short of what is needed to absorb the 20 million Chinese workers who migrate each year from the countryside to the towns in search of a better life. As a barometer of the political and social tensions that this grim world economic outlook portends, one needs look no further than the recent employment forecast of the International Labor Organization. The ILO believes that the global financial crisis will wipe out 30 million jobs worldwide in 2009, while in a worst case scenario as many as 50 million jobs could be lost. What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and global chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20 million migrant laborers lost their jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face increasing risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence, as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets. Europe as a whole will face dangerously increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for the rest of Europe. A prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist legislation in the United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what they are doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang. [This impact kinda sucks, but I didn’t have another one besides Khalilzad ‘95] Hegemony --- Global nuke war Arbatov ‘07 (Alexei, Member – Russian Academy of Sciences and Editor – Russia in Global Affairs, “Is a New Cold War Imminent?”, Russia in Global Affairs, 5(3), July / September, http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/20/1130.html) However, the low probability of a new Cold War and the collapse of American unipolarity (as a political doctrine, if not in reality) cannot be a cause for complacency. Multipolarity, existing objectively at various levels and interdependently, holds many difficulties and threats. For example, if the Russia-NATO confrontation persists, it can do much damage to both parties and international security. Or, alternatively, if Kosovo secedes from Serbia, this may provoke similar processes in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniestria, and involve Russia in armed conflicts with Georgia and Moldova, two countries that are supported by NATO. Another flash point involves Ukraine. In the event of Kiev’s sudden admission into the North Atlantic Alliance (recently sanctioned by the U.S. Congress), such a move may divide Ukraine and provoke mass disorders there, thus making it difficult for Russia and the West to refrain from interfering. Meanwhile, U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Central and Eastern Europe may cause Russia to withdraw from the INF Treaty and resume programs for producing intermediate-range missiles. Washington may respond by deploying similar missiles in Europe, which would dramatically increase the vulnerability of Russia’s strategic forces and their control and warning systems. This could make the stage for nuclear confrontation even tenser. Other “centers of power” would immediately derive benefit from the growing Russia-West standoff, using it in their own interests. China would receive an opportunity to occupy even more advantageous positions in its economic and political relations with Russia, the U.S. and Japan, and would consolidate its influence in Central and South Asia and the Persian Gulf region. India, Pakistan, member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and some exalted regimes in Latin America would hardly miss their chance, either. A multipolar world that is not moving toward nuclear disarmament is a world of an expanding Nuclear Club. While Russia and the West continue to argue with each other, states that are capable of developing nuclear weapons of their own will jump at the opportunity. The probability of nuclear weapons being used in a regional conflict will increase significantly. International Islamic extremism and terrorism will increase dramatically; this threat represents the reverse side of globalization. The situation in Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Middle East, and North and East Africa will further destabilize. The wave of militant separatism, trans-border crime and terrorism will also infiltrate Western Europe, Russia, the U.S., and other countries. The surviving disarmament treaties (the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) will collapse. In a worst-case scenario, there is the chance that an adventuresome regime will initiate a missile launch against territories or space satellites of one or several great powers with a view to triggering an exchange of nuclear strikes between them. Another high probability is the threat of a terrorist act with the use of a nuclear device in one or several major capitals of the world. Grid shutdown --- extinction IBT ‘11 (International Business Times,- http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/213249/20110914/solar-flare-could-unleash-nuclear-holocaust-across-planet-earth-forcing-hundreds-of-nuclear-power-pl.htm) But the real kicker in all this is that the power grid will be destroyed nearly everywhere. What happens when there's no electricity? Imagine a world without electricity. Even for just a week. Imagine New York City with no electricity, or Los Angeles, or Sao Paulo. Within 72 hours, most cities around the world will devolve into total chaos, complete with looting, violent crime, and runaway fires. But that's not even the bad news. Even if all the major cities of the world burned to the ground for some other reason, humanity could still recover because it has the farmlands: the soils, the seeds, and the potential to recover, right? And yet the real crisis here stems from the realization that once there is no power grid, all the nuclear power plants of the world suddenly go into "emergency mode" and are forced to rely on their on-site emergency power backups to circulate coolants and prevent nuclear meltdowns from occurring. And yet, as we've already established, these facilities typically have only a few hours of battery power available, followed by perhaps a few days worth of diesel fuel to run their generators (or propane, in some cases). Did I also mention that half the people who work at nuclear power facilities have no idea what they're doing in the first place? Most of the veterans who really know the facilities inside and out have been forced into retirement due to reaching their lifetime limits of on-the-job radiation exposure, so most of the workers at nuclear facilities right now are newbies who really have no clue what they're doing. There are 440 nuclear power plants operating across 30 countries around the world today. There are an additional 250 so-called "research reactors" in existence, making a total of roughly 700 nuclear reactors to be dealt with (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/i...). Now imagine the scenario: You've got a massive solar flare that knocks out the world power grid and destroys the majority of the power grid transformers, thrusting the world into darkness. Cities collapse into chaos and rioting, martial law is quickly declared (but it hardly matters), and every nation in the world is on full emergency. But that doesn't solve the really big problem, which is that you've got 700 nuclear reactors that can't feed power into the grid (because all the transformers are blown up) and yet simultaneously have to be fed a steady stream of emergency fuels to run the generators the keep the coolant pumps functioning. How long does the coolant need to circulate in these facilities to cool the nuclear fuel? Months. This is also the lesson of Fukushima: You can't cool nuclear fuel in mere hours or days. It takes months to bring these nuclear facilities to a state of cold shutdown. And that means in order to avoid a multitude of Fukushima-style meltdowns from occurring around the world, you need to truck diesel fuel, generator parts and nuclear plant workers to every nuclear facility on the planet, ON TIME, every time, without fail, for months on end. Now remember, this must be done in the middle of the total chaos breakdown of modern civilization, where there is no power, where law enforcement and emergency services are totally overrun, where people are starving because food deliveries have been disrupted, and when looting and violent crime runs rampant in the streets of every major city in the world. Somehow, despite all this, you have to run these diesel fuel caravans to the nuclear power plants and keep the pumps running. Except there's a problem in all this, even if you assume you can somehow work a logistical miracle and actually deliver the diesel fuel to the backup generators on time (which you probably can't). The problem is this: Where do you get diesel fuel? Why refineries will be shut down, too From petroleum refineries. Most people don't realize it, but petroleum refineries run on electricity. Without the power grid, the refineries don't produce a drop of diesel. With no diesel, there are no generators keeping the coolant running in the nuclear power facilities. But wait, you say: Maybe we could just acquire diesel from all the gas stations in the world. Pump it out of the ground, load it into trucks and use that to power the generators, right? Except there are other problems here: How do you pump all that fuel without electricity? How do you acquire all the tires and spare parts needed to keep trucks running if there's no electricity to keep the supply businesses running? How do you maintain a truck delivery infrastructure when the electrical infrastructure is totally wiped out? Some countries might be able to pull it off with some degree of success. With military escorts and the total government control over all fuel supplies, a few nations will be able to keep a few nuclear power facilities from melting down. But here's the real issue: There are 700 nuclear power facilities in the world, remember? Let's suppose that in the aftermath of a massive solar flare, the nations of the world are somehow able to control half of those facilities and nurse them into cold shutdown status. That still leaves roughly 350 nuclear facilities at risk. Now let's suppose half of those are somehow luckily offline and not even functioning when the solar flare hits, so they need no special attention. This is a very optimistic assumption, but that still leaves 175 nuclear power plants where all attempts fail. Let's be outrageously optimistic and suppose that a third of those somehow don't go into a total meltdown by some miracle of God, or some bizarre twist in the laws of physics. So we're still left with 115 nuclear power plants that "go Chernobyl." Fukushima was one power plant. Imagine the devastation of 100+ nuclear power plants, all going into meltdown all at once across the planet. It's not the loss of electricity that's the real problem; it's the global tidal wave of invisible radiation that blankets the planet, permeates the topsoil, irradiates everything that breathes and delivers the final crushing blow to human civilization as we know it today. Because if you have 100 simultaneous global nuclear meltdowns, the tidal wave of radiation will make farming nearly impossible for years. That means no food production for several years in a row. And that, in turn, means a near-total collapse of the human population on our planet. How many people can survive an entire year with no food from the farms? Not one in a hundred people. Even beyond that, how many people can essentially live underground and be safe enough from the radiation that they can have viable children and repopulate the planet? It's a very, very small fraction of the total population. Food prices --- global war Winnail ‘96 (Dr, PHD, The World Ahead, Oct, www.kurtsaxon.com/foods004.htm) Another worrisome trend is described by Stanford University biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich. Fifty years ago "most regions of the world were self-sufficient in food production, and many exported grain. Since then, for various reasons, the pattern has dramatically changed; more than 100 nations now import grain from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and a few other surplus producers.... Nearly all developing nations have become dependent on grain imports to keep their populations adequately fed.... This growing worldwide dependency on a mere handful of suppliers for basic foodstuffs could itself spell trouble for global food security ". This shift to dependency has ominous implications for the future. As nations industrialize, people move from rural farms and villages to the cities, leaving fewer laborers to produce food. Agricultural skills are lost and more people become dependent on distant food supplies. Prime agricultural land is permanently lost to urban development, reducing the acreage available to grow food. In just two years, China turned from exporting grain to Japan (8 million tons) into the world's second largest grain importer (16 million tons). Some are concerned that, if this ominous trend is not reversed, China would need to import virtually all the grain available for export in the world. TECHNOLOGY--A PLAYED-OUT SAVIOR? Optimists are quick to point out that a major reason why pessimists were wrong in their predictions for widespread famine in the 1960s was their failure to anticipate the arrival of the "green revolution" with its new strains of high-yield seeds, chemical pesticides, increased use of fertilizers and improved irrigation. These four factors kept grain production ahead of the doubling population. The predicted worldwide famine did not materialize. But were the doomsayers wrong--or only premature? Paul and Anne Ehrlich, among others, suggest that yield increases from green-revolution technology may now be playing out. Worldwide fertilizer use, which increased over 1,000 percent during the green revolution years, has been declining for several years in a row. Insects are developing resistance to pesticides. Underground aquifers used for irrigation are being depleted. While plant scientists talk of continuing to boost grain production through biotechnology, the Ehrlichs--both biologists--suggest, no promising new technology appears on the horizon that could carry the process (green-revolution technology) further on a global scale. From their perspective, a big jump in agricultural productivity resulting from advances in biotechnology is not foreseen . With the green revolution apparently running out of gas, numerous observers are warning that the globe is on the brink of a new era of food scarcity. In fact, the growing dependency on bioengineered crop varieties may contain the seeds of our own destruction. FRAGILE FOOD CHAIN Today our food supply depends upon a few hybridized varieties of a very limited selection of plant species--primarily wheat, corn, rice and potatoes. These plants are genetically bred for uniform qualities of color, size and texture while other traits are eliminated. What many do not realize is that reducing the genetic base in this way may boost efficiency, but it also increases the risk that one type of pest will infest a whole harvest. When entire fields or regions are planted with just one hybrid variety of a single crop--such as Russet Burbank potatoes that McDonald's prefers to make French fries with--you have a potential disaster waiting to happen. It has happened before! The Great Irish Potato Famine in the late 1840s developed during a series of wet growing seasons when a fungus from Europe spread through many fields planted with a single variety of potato. The collapse of this crop was catastrophic. Over a million Irish died and millions more emigrated to escape the horrible conditions spawned by a "sinister trend toward monoculture," oppressive political decisions and unusual weather. Now a new strain of this same fungus has reappeared in the 1990s and is sweeping through potato fields in much of Europe and North America and parts of South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The aggressive new strain is resistant to commonly used pesticides and has been called one of the worst crises to ever strike the U.S. potato industry. It has the potential of causing serious problems to our food supply if wet weather develops. However, the potato blight is only one part of a very disturbing picture. Karnal bunt fungus has turned the 1996 durum wheat harvest in the southwestern U.S. into a nightmare. A soybean fungus, for which there is no known treatment, has appeared in Hawaii. Reports are also surfacing that genetically engineered plants designed to withstand herbicides can pass those new genes to nearby weeds. The European Union recently refused to approve the sale of a genetically engineered variety of corn, fearing the genes for antibiotic resistance might be passed on to cattle and humans. The impressive methods of modern grain production rest on a very narrow and fragile genetic base. Our future harvest could be likened to delicately balanced houses of cards--highly susceptible to sudden changes. However, there is one more unpredictable factor that is capable of dramatically affecting the size and quality of global food supplies. WEATHER--A WILD CARD! What is seldom stated is that optimistic forecasts for increasing grain production are based on critical long-term assumptions that include normal (average) weather. Yet in recent years this has definitely not been the case. Severe and unusual weather conditions have suddenly appeared around the globe. Some of the worst droughts, heat waves, heavy rains and flooding on record have reduced harvests in China, Spain, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Canada--major grain growing regions of the world--by 40 to 50 percent. As a result grain prices are the highest on record. Worldwatch Institute's president, Lester Brown, writes, "No other economic indicator is more politically sensitive that rising food prices.... Food prices spiraling out of control could trigger not only economic instability but widespread political upheavals"-- even wars. The chaotic weather conditions we have been experiencing appear to be related to global warming caused by the release of pollutants into the earth's atmosphere. A recent article entitled "Heading for Apocalypse?" suggests the effects of global warming--and its side effects of increasingly severe droughts, floods and storms--could be catastrophic, especially for agriculture. The unpredictable shifts in temperature and rainfall will pose an increased risk of hunger and famine for many of the world's poor. With world food stores dwindling, grain production leveling off and a string of bad harvests around the world, the next couple of years will be critical. Agricultural experts suggest it will take two bumper crops in a row to bring supplies back up to normal. However, poor harvests in 1996 and 1997 could create severe food shortages and push millions over the edge. Is it possible we are only one or two harvests away from a global disaster? Is there any significance to what is happening today? Where is it all leading? What does the future hold? The clear implication is that things will get worse before they get better. Wars, famine and disease will affect the lives of billions of people! Although famines have occurred at various times in the past, the new famines will happen during a time of unprecedented global stress--times that have no parallel in recorded history--at a time when the total destruction of humanity would be possible! [Inset Chemical Industry] Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 1.51 Mb. 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