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- Small Business is the backbone of the economy.
- Economic decline triggers lash-out and global war---no checks
- Cloud computing key to climate modeling
- Key to warming adaptation
- Warming is inevitable–only adaptation can prevent extinction
- Adaptation solves global wars
- Asteroid strikes are likely and cause extinction
- At least 10% are undetected
- Technical discussions about asteroids are crucial to educating the public
- We have deflection capabilities, but detection is key
- Asteroids are real threats – psychoanalysis does not disprove our factual claims
Small Businesses AddonCloud computing key to adapt small businesses to server needs.Nguyen, 2011 (Hien Timothy M., Candidate for Juris Doctor, Notre Dame Law School, 2012, “CLOUD COVER: PRIVACY PROTECTIONS AND THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT IN THE AGE OF CLOUD COMPUTING” Notre Dame Law Review Lexis) In the corporate environment, cloud computing also provides many benefits. Cloud computing provides scalability, which can be especially beneficial to emerging companies. Rather than being forced to invest in equipment,90 software, and personnel to maintain the systems, companies can purchase computing power and storage space from a cloud provider.91 Cloud computing provides for flexible “usage-based pricing,”92 because the “hours” purchased through cloud computing “can be distributed non-uniformly in time (e.g., use 100 server-hours today and no server-hours tomorrow”93 and the company will only have to pay for the hours it uses.94 In the event of a business slowdown, where a company needs to scale down its resource usage, cloud computing might reduce or even eliminate the financial loss of having under-utilized equipment.95 If a business needs to scale up its resource usage, cloud computing allows it to add resources quickly, with very short lead-time of minutes or hours (instead of days or weeks to procure the physical equipment), which allows the matching of resources to workload much more closely.96 For example, an Internet retailer might be extremely busy during the holidays, but far less busy during the rest of the year. Cloud computing allows for the retailer to purchase additional resources during the holiday season to accommodate the rush of traffic, without having to purchase and maintain underutilized systems during the rest of the year.97 This prevents wasted resources during the rest of the year, and reduces the risk of accidentally turning away customers during a spike in sales.98 Finally, businesses might save because the cloud provider can pass on some of the savings they get from their economy-of-scale buying power for computing hardware and software.99 Yet, there are many privacy implications that come along with the vast benefits of cloud computing. Having data on the servers of a cloud service provider instead of your own means that if the provider’s servers are compromised, then your data could potentially also be compromised.100 A cloud service provider might retain the right to disclose information to another party.101 The “terms of service” of cloud providers might also vary from provider to provider, leading users to potentially rely on privacy protections that may exist with one provider, but not another. The growing trend towards cloud computing usage means that more and more people will be storing their data on remote servers (which will likely be outside Fourth Amendment protections, as currently understood). Small Business is the backbone of the economy.Hecht 12/17/2014 (Jared, CEO and Co-founder, Fundera, “Are Small Businesses Really the Backbone of the Economy?” INC http://www.inc.com/jared-hecht/are-small-businesses-really-the-backbone-of-the-economy.html) In a conversation about the value of small business for the U.S. economy, we can't leave out this truth--all businesses start small. All of the 18,500 businesses in the United States with 500 or more employees once began as a part of the small business sector. Apple started in Steve Jobs's garage. Facebook got its start in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room. Home-based, non-employing small businesses become small employers, which in turn become big businesses. So, in a way, one could argue that the American small business economy is the American economy. It's where the U.S. economy begins. As a caveat, let's keep in mind that the majority of these numbers come from the 2010 Census, or from the Office of Economic Research's 2012 study--which are considered the most accurate numbers reflecting the state of jobs and business in the country. Being that we're coming up on 2015, it's likely that these numbers have undergone some adjustment since then. However, the Small Business Administration indicates that America's small business economy is growing along with the rest of the recession recovery. Although small businesses may be growing at a slower pace due to lending challenges, that disparity has not been enough to tip the scales. Facts are still facts, and small businesses are still the backbone of the U.S. Economy. Economic decline triggers lash-out and global war---no checksHarold James 14, Professor of history at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School who specializes in European economic history, 7/2/14, “Debate: Is 2014, like 1914, a prelude to world war?,” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/read-and-vote-is-2014-like-1914-a-prelude-to-world-war/article19325504/ As we get closer to the centenary of Gavrilo Princip’s act of terrorism in Sarajevo, there is an ever more vivid fear: it could happen again. The approach of the hundredth anniversary of 1914 has put a spotlight on the fragility of the world’s political and economic security systems. At the beginning of 2013, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was widely ridiculed for evoking the shades of 1913. By now he is looking like a prophet. By 2014, as the security situation in the South China Sea deteriorated, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cast China as the equivalent to Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany; and the fighting in Ukraine and in Iraq is a sharp reminder of the dangers of escalation. Lessons of 1914 are about more than simply the dangers of national and sectarian animosities. The main story of today as then is the precariousness of financial globalization, and the consequences that political leaders draw from it. In the influential view of Norman Angell in his 1910 book The Great Illusion, the interdependency of the increasingly complex global economy made war impossible. But a quite opposite conclusion was possible and equally plausible – and proved to be the case. Given the extent of fragility, a clever twist to the control levers might make war easily winnable by the economic hegemon. In the wake of an epochal financial crisis that almost brought a complete global collapse, in 1907, several countries started to think of finance as primarily an instrument of raw power, one that could and should be turned to national advantage. The 1907 panic emanated from the United States but affected the rest of the world and demonstrated the fragility of the whole international financial order. The aftermath of the 1907 crash drove the then hegemonic power – Great Britain - to reflect on how it could use its financial power. Between 1905 and 1908, the British Admiralty evolved the broad outlines of a plan for financial and economic warfare that would wreck the financial system of its major European rival, Germany, and destroy its fighting capacity. Britain used its extensive networks to gather information about opponents. London banks financed most of the world’s trade. Lloyds provided insurance for the shipping not just of Britain, but of the world. Financial networks provided the information that allowed the British government to find the sensitive strategic vulnerabilities of the opposing alliance. What pre-1914 Britain did anticipated the private-public partnership that today links technology giants such as Google, Apple or Verizon to U.S. intelligence gathering. Since last year, the Edward Snowden leaks about the NSA have shed a light on the way that global networks are used as a source of intelligence and power. For Britain’s rivals, the financial panic of 1907 showed the necessity of mobilizing financial powers themselves. The United States realized that it needed a central bank analogous to the Bank of England. American financiers thought that New York needed to develop its own commercial trading system that could handle bills of exchange in the same way as the London market. Some of the dynamics of the pre-1914 financial world are now re-emerging. Then an economically declining power, Britain, wanted to use finance as a weapon against its larger and faster growing competitors, Germany and the United States. Now America is in turn obsessed by being overtaken by China – according to some calculations, set to become the world’s largest economy in 2014. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions appear both as dangerous weapons of mass destruction, but also as potential instruments for the application of national power. In managing the 2008 crisis, the dependence of foreign banks on U.S. dollar funding constituted a major weakness, and required the provision of large swap lines by the Federal Reserve. The United States provided that support to some countries, but not others, on the basis of an explicitly political logic, as Eswar Prasad demonstrates in his new book on the “Dollar Trap.” Geo-politics is intruding into banking practice elsewhere. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russian banks were trying to acquire assets in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are playing a much reduced role in Asian trade finance. Chinese banks are being pushed to expand their role in global commerce. After the financial crisis, China started to build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia and China have just proposed to create a new credit rating agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of the existing (American-based) agencies. The next stage in this logic is to think about how financial power can be directed to national advantage in the case of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly successful) part of the pressure applied to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But financial pressure can be much more powerfully applied to countries that are deeply embedded in the world economy. The test is in the Western imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea. President Vladimir Putin’s calculation in response is that the European Union and the United States cannot possibly be serious about the financial war. It would turn into a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed and complex financial markets of Europe and America. The threat of systemic disruption generates a new sort of uncertainty, one that mirrors the decisive feature of the crisis of the summer of 1914. At that time, no one could really know whether clashes would escalate or not. That feature contrasts remarkably with almost the entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the strategic doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction left no doubt that any superpower conflict would inevitably escalate. The idea of network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise, and to win at no or low cost. But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others might, but also might not be able to, mount the same sort of operation. Just as in 1914, there is an enhanced temptation to roll the dice, even though the game may be fatal. Warming AddonCloud computing key to climate modelingBoyce, 10 (Eric, technical writer and user advocate for The Rackspace Cloud, September 14, 2010 http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/09/14/the-future-of-cloud-computing-the-big-25-in-the-next-25/) The promise of the cloud isn’t just about gaming and the ability to safely store all those photos that you wish you hadn’t ever taken. Many of the most promising cloud-based applications also require massive computational power. Searching a database of global DNA samples requires abundant, scalable processing power. Modeling protein folding is another example of how compute resources will be used. Protein folding is linked to many diseases including Alzheimer’s and cancer, and analyzing the folding process can lead to new treatments and cures, but it requires enormous compute power. Projects like Folding@home are using distributed computing to tackle these modeling tasks. The cloud will offer a larger, faster, more scalable way to process data and thus benefit any heavy data manipulation task. 6. Is it going to be hot tomorrow? Like protein folding modeling, climate simulation and forecasting requires a large amount of data storage and processing. Recently the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) installed a climate calculating supercomputer that is capable of analyzing 60 petabytes of data (roughly 13 million DVD’s) at over 158 teraflops (trillion calculations per second). In the next couple of decades, this level of computing power will be widely available and will exist on remote hardware. Sophisticated climate models combined with never before seen compute power will provide better predictions of climate change and more rapid early warning systems Key to warming adaptationPope, 10 (Vicky Pope is the head of climate science advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre, “ How science will shape climate adaptation plans,” 16 September 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/sep/16/science-climate-change-adaptation) Some would argue that the demand for information on how climate change will affect our future outstrips the current capability of the science and climate models. My view is that as scientists, we can provide useful information, but we need to be clear about its limitations and strive to improve information for the future. We need to be clear about the uncertainties in our projections while still extracting useful information for practical decision-making. I have been involved in developing climate models for the last 15 years and despite their limitations we are now able to assess the probability of different outcomes for the first time. That means we can quantify the risk of these outcomes happening. These projections – the UK climate projections published in 2009 - are already forming the backbone of adaptation decisions being made in the UK for 50 to 100 years ahead. A project commissioned by the Environment Agency to investigate the impact of climate change on the Thames estuary over the next 100 years concluded that current government predictions for sea level rise are realistic. A major outcome from the scientific analysis was that the worst-case scenarios for high water levels can be significantly reduced - from 4.2m to 2.7m – because we are able to rule out the more extreme sea level rise. As a result, massive investment in a tide-excluding estuary barrage is unlikely to be needed this century. This will be reviewed as more information becomes available, taking a flexible approach to adaptation. The energy industry, working with the Met Office, looked at the likely impact of climate change on its infrastructure. The project found that very few changes in design standards are required, although it did highlight a number of issues. For instance, transformers could suffer higher failure rates and efficiency of some types of thermal power station could be markedly reduced because of increasing temperatures. A particular concern highlighted by this report and reiterated in today's report from the Climate Change Committee - the independent body that advises government on its climate targets - is that little is known about how winds will change in the future - important because of the increasing role of wind power in the UK energy mix. Fortunately many people, from private industry to government, recognise the value of even incomplete information to help make decisions about the future. Demand for climate information is increasing, particularly relating to changes in the short to medium term. More still needs to be done to refine the climate projections and make them more usable and accessible. This is especially true if we are to provide reliable projections for the next 10 to 30 years. The necessary science and modelling tools are being developed, and the first tentative results are being produced. We need particularly to look at how we communicate complex and often conflicting results. In order to explain complex science to a lay audience, scientists and journalists are prone to progressively downplay the complexity. Conversely, in striving to adopt a more scientific approach and include the full range of uncertainty, we often give sceptics an easy route to undermine the science. All too often uncertainty in science offers a convenient excuse for delaying important decisions. However, in the case of climate change there is overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing — in part due to human activities — and that changes will accelerate if emissions continue unabated. In examining the uncertainty in the science we must take care to not throw away what we do know. Science has established that climate is changing. Scientists now need to press on in developing the emerging tools that will be used to underpin sensible adaptation decisions which will determine our future. Warming is inevitable–only adaptation can prevent extinctionRomero, 8 (purple, reporter for ABS-CBN news, 05/17/2008, Climate change and human extinction--are you ready to be fossilized? http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/05/16/08/climate-change-and-human-extinction-are-you-ready-be-fossilized) Climate change killed the dinosaurs. Will it kill us as well? Will we let it destroy the human race? This was the grim, depressing message that hung in the background of the Climate Change Forum hosted on Friday by the Philippine National Red Cross at the Manila Hotel. "Not one dinosaur is alive today. Maybe someday it will be our fossils that another race will dig up in the future, " said Roger Bracke of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, underscoring his point that no less than extinction is faced by the human race, unless we are able to address global warming and climate change in this generation. Bracke, however, countered the pessimistic mood of the day by saying that the human race still has an opportunity to save itself. This more hopeful view was also presented by the four other speakers in the forum. Bracke pointed out that all peoples of the world must be involved in two types of response to the threat of climate change: mitigation and adaptation. "Prevention" is no longer possible, according to Bracke and the other experts at the forum, since climate change is already happening. Last chance The forum's speakers all noted the increasing number and intensity of devastating typhoons--most recently cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, which killed more than 100,000 people--as evidence that the world's climatic and weather conditions are turning deadly because of climate change. They also reminded the audience that deadly typhoons have also hit the Philippines recently, particularly Milenyo and Reming, which left hundreds of thousands of Filipino families homeless. World Wildlife Fund Climate and Energy Program head Naderev Saño said that "this generation the last chance for the human race" to do something and ensure that humanity stays alive in this planet. According to Saño, while most members of our generation will be dead by the time the worst effects of climate change are felt, our children will be the ones to suffer. How will Filipinos survive climate change? Well, first of all, they have to be made aware that climate change is a problem that threatens their lives. The easiest way to do this – as former Consultant for the Secretariats of the UN Convention on Climate Change Dr. Pak Sum Low told abs-cbnews.com/Newsbreak – is to particularize the disasters that it could cause. Talking in the language of destruction, Pak and other experts paint this portrait of a Philippines hit by climate change: increased typhoons in Visayas, drought in Mindanao, destroyed agricultural areas in Pampanga, and higher incidence rates of dengue and malaria. Sañom said that as polar ice caps melt due to global warming, sea levels will rise, endangering coastal and low-lying areas like Manila. He said Manila Bay would experience a sea level increase of 72 meters over 20 years. This means that from Pampanga to Nueva Ecija, farms and fishponds would be in danger of being would be inundated in saltwater. Sañom added that Albay, which has been marked as a vulnerable area to typhoons, would be the top province at risk. Sañom also pointed out that extreme weather conditions arising from climate change, including typhoons and severe droughts, would have social, economic and political consequences: Ruined farmlands and fishponds would hamper crop growth and reduce food sources, typhoons would displace people, cause diseases, and limit actions in education and employment. Thus, Saño said, while environmental protection should remain at the top of the agenda in fighting climate change, solutions to the phenomenon "must also be economic, social, moral and political." Mitigation Joyceline Goco, Climate Change Coordinator of the Environment Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, focused her lecture on the programs Philippine government is implementing in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Goco said that the Philippines is already a signatory to global agreements calling for a reduction in the "greenhouse gasses"--mostly carbon dioxide, chloroflourocarbons and methane--that are responsible for trapping heat inside the planet and raising global temperatures. Goco said the DENR, which is tasked to oversee and activate the Clean Development Mechanism, has registered projects which would reduce methane and carbon dioxide. These projects include landfill and electricity generation initiatives. She also said that the government is also looking at alternative fuel sources in order do reduce the country's dependence on the burning of fossil fuels--oil--which are known culprits behind global warming. Bracke however said that mitigation is not enough. "The ongoing debate about mitigation of climate change effects is highly technical. It involves making fundamental changes in the policies of governments, making costly changes in how industry operates. All of this takes time and, frankly, we're not even sure if such mitigation efforts will be successful. In the meantime, while the debate goes on, the effects of climate change are already happening to us." Adaptation A few nations and communities have already begun adapting their lifestyles to cope with the effects of climate change. In Bangladesh, farmers have switched to raising ducks instead of chickens because the latter easily succumb to weather disturbances and immediate effects, such as floods. In Norway, houses with elevated foundations have been constructed to decrease displacement due to typhoons. In the Philippines main body for fighting climate change, the Presidential Task Force on Climate Change, (PTFCC) headed by Department on Energy Sec. Angelo Reyes, has identified emission reduction measures and has looked into what fuel mix could be both environment and economic friendly. The Department of Health has started work with the World Health Organization in strengthening its surveillance mechanisms for health services. However, bringing information hatched from PTFCC’s studies down to and crafting an action plan for adaptation with the communities in the barangay level remains a challenge. Bracke said that the Red Cross is already at the forefront of efforts to prepare for disasters related to climate change. He pointed out that since the Red Cross was founded in 1919, it has already been helping people beset by natural disasters. "The problems resulting from climate change are not new to the Red Cross. The Red Cross has been facing those challenges for a long time. However, the frequency and magnitude of those problems are unprecedented. This is why the Red Cross can no longer face these problems alone," he said. Using a medieval analogy, Bracke said that the Red Cross can no longer be a "knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in distress" whenever disaster strikes. He said that disaster preparedness in the face of climate change has to involve people at the grassroots level. "The role of the Red Cross in the era of climate change will be less as a direct actor and increase as a trainor and guide to other partners who will help us adapt to climate change and respond to disasters," said Bracke. PNRC chairman and Senator Richard Gordon gave a picture of how the PNRC plans to take climate change response to the grassroots level, through its project, dubbed "Red Cross 143". Gordon explained how Red Cross 143 will train forty-four volunteers from each community at a barangay level. These volunteers will have training in leading communities in disaster response. Red Cross 143 volunteers will rely on information technology like cellular phones to alert the PNRC about disasters in their localities, mobilize people for evacuation, and lead efforts to get health care, emergency supplies, rescue efforts, etc. Adaptation solves global warsWerz and Conley 12 - Senior Fellow @American Progress where his work as member of the National Security Team focuses on the nexus of climate change, migration, and security and emerging democracies & Research Associate for National Security and International Policy @ the Center for American Progress [Michael Werz & Laura Conley, “Climate Change, Migration, and Conflict: Addressing complex crisis scenarios in the 21st Century,” Center for American Progress, January 2012] The costs and consequences of climate change on our world will define the 21st century. Even if nations across our planet were to take immediate steps to rein in carbon emissions—an unlikely prospect—a warmer climate is inevitable. As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, noted in 2007, human-created “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.”1 As these ill effects progress they will have serious implications for U.S. national security interests as well as global stability—extending from the sustainability of coastal military installations to the stability of nations that lack the resources, good governance, and resiliency needed to respond to the many adverse consequences of climate change. And as these effects accelerate, the stress will impact human migration and conflict around the world. It is difficult to fully understand the detailed causes of migration and economic and political instability, but the growing evidence of links between climate change, migration, and conflict raise plenty of reasons for concern. This is why it’s time to start thinking about new and comprehensive answers to multifaceted crisis scenarios brought on or worsened by global climate change. As Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, argues, “The question we must continuously ask ourselves in the face of scientific complexity and uncertainty, but also growing evidence of climate change, is at what point precaution, common sense or prudent risk management demands action.”2 In the coming decades climate change will increasingly threaten humanity’s shared interests and collective security in many parts of the world, disproportionately affecting the globe’s least developed countries. Climate change will pose challenging social, political, and strategic questions for the many different multinational, regional, national, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to improving the human condition worldwide. Organizations as different as Amnesty International, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee, and the World Health Organization will all have to tackle directly the myriad effects of climate change. Climate change also poses distinct challenges to U.S. national security. Recent intelligence reports and war games, including some conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense, conclude that over the next two or three decades, vulnerable regions (particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia) will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises, and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change. These developments could demand U.S., European, and international humanitarian relief or military responses, often the delivery vehicle for aid in crisis situations. This report provides the foundation and overview for a series of papers focusing on the particular challenges posed by the cumulative effects of climate change, migration, and conflict in some of our world’s most complex environments. In the papers following this report, we plan to outline the effects of this nexus in northwest Africa, in India and Bangladesh, in the Andean region of South America, and in China. In this paper we detail that nexus across our planet and offer wide ranging recommendations about how the United States, its allies in the global community, and the community at large can deal with the coming climate-driven crises with comprehensive sustainable security solutions encompassing national security, diplomacy, and economic, social, and environmental development. Here, we briefly summarize our arguments and our conclusions. The nexus The Arab Spring can be at least partly credited to climate change. Rising food prices and efforts by authoritarian regimes to crush political protests were linked first to food and then to political repression—two important motivators in the Arab makeover this past year. To be sure, longstanding economic and social distress and lack of opportunity for so many Arab youth in the Middle East and across North Africa only needed a spark to ignite revolutions across the region. But environmental degradation and the movement of people from rural areas to already overcrowded cities alongside rising food prices enabled the cumulative effects of long-term economic and political failures to sweep across borders with remarkable agility. It does not require much foresight to acknowledge that other effects of climate change will add to the pressure in the decades to come. In particular the cumulative overlays of climate change with human migration driven by environmental crises, political conflict caused by this migration, and competition for more scarce resources will add new dimensions of complexity to existing and future crisis scenarios. It is thus critical to understand how governments plan to answer and prioritize these new threats from climate change, migration, and conflict. Climate change Climate change alone poses a daunting challenge. No matter what steps the global community takes to mitigate carbon emissions, a warmer climate is inevitable. The effects are already being felt today and will intensify as climate change worsens. All of the world’s regions and nations will experience some of the effects of this transformational challenge. Here’s just one case in point: African states are likely to be the most vulnerable to multiple stresses, with up to 250 million people projected to suffer from water and food insecurity and, in low-lying areas, a rising sea level.3 As little as 1 percent of Africa’s land is located in low-lying coastal zones but this land supports 12 percent of its urban population.4 Furthermore, a majority of people in Africa live in lower altitudes—including the Sahel, the area just south of the Sahara—where the worst effects of water scarcity, hotter temperatures, and longer dry seasons are expected to occur.5 These developments may well be exacerbated by the lack of state and regional capacity to manage the effects of climate change. These same dynamics haunt many nations in Asia and the Americas, too, and the implications for developed countries such as the United States and much of Europe will be profound. Migration Migration adds another layer of complexity to the scenario. In the 21st century the world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced by either the slow or sudden onset of the effects of climate change. The United Nations’ recent Human Development Report stated that, worldwide, there are already an estimated 700 million internal migrants—those leaving their homes within their own countries—a number that includes people whose migration isrelated to climate change and environmental factors. Overall migration across national borders is already at approximately 214 million people worldwide,6 with estimates of up to 20 million displaced in 2008 alone because of a rising sea level, desertification, and flooding.7 One expert, Oli Brown of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, predicts a tenfold increase in the current number of internally displaced persons and international refugees by 2050.8 It is important to acknowledge that there is no consensus on this estimate. In fact there is major disagreement among experts about how to identify climate as a causal factor in internal and international migration. But even though the root causes of human mobility are not always easy to decipher, the policy challenges posed by that movement are real. A 2009 report by the International Organization for Migration produced in cooperation with the United Nations University and the Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance cites numbers that range from “200 million to 1 billion migrants from climate change alone, by 2050,”9 arguing that “environmental drivers of migration are often coupled with economic, social and developmental factors that can accelerate and to a certain extent mask the impact of climate change.” The report also notes that “migration can result from different environmental factors, among them gradual environmental degradation (including desertification, soil and coastal erosion) and natural disasters (such as earthquakes, floods or tropical storms).”10 (See box on page 15 for a more detailed definition of climate migrants.) Clearly, then, climate change is expected to aggravate many existing migratory pressures around the world. Indeed associated extreme weather events resulting in drought, floods, and disease are projected to increase the number of sudden humanitarian crises and disasters in areas least able to cope, such as those already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.11 Conflict This final layer is the most unpredictable, both within nations and transnationally, and will force the United States and the international community to confront climate and migration challenges within an increasingly unstructured local or regional security environment. In contrast to the great power conflicts and the associated proxy wars that marked most of the 20th century, the immediate post- Cold War decades witnessed a diffusion of national security interests and threats. U.S. national security policy is increasingly integrating thinking about nonstate actors and nontraditional sources of conflict and instability, for example in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliated groups. Climate change is among these newly visible issues sparking conflict. But because the direct link between conflict and climate change is unclear, awareness of the indirect links has yet to lead to substantial and sustained action to address its security implications. Still the potential for the changing climate to induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions is now recognized in national security circles in the United States, although research gaps still exists in many places. The climate-conflict nexus was highlighted with particular effect by the current U.S. administration’s security-planning reviews over the past two years, as well as the Center for Naval Analysis, which termed climate change a “threat multiplier,” indicating that it can exacerbate existing stresses and insecurity.12 The Pentagon’s latest Quadrennial Defense Review also recognized climate change as an “accelerant of instability or conflict,” highlighting the operational challenges that will confront U.S. and partner militaries amid a rising sea level, growing extreme weather events, and other anticipated effects of climate change.13 The U.S. Department of Defense has even voiced concern for American military installations that may be threatened by a rising sea level.14 There is also well-developed international analysis on these points. The United Kingdom’s 2010 Defense Review, for example, referenced the security aspects of climate change as an evolving challenge for militaries and policymakers. Additionally, in 2010, the Nigerian government referred to climate change as the “greatest environmental and humanitarian challenge facing the country this century,” demonstrating that climate change is no longer seen as solely scientific or environmental, but increasingly as a social and political issue cutting across all aspects of human development.15 As these three threads—climate change, migration, and conflict—interact more intensely, the consequences will be far-reaching and occasionally counterintuitive. It is impossible to predict the outcome of the Arab Spring movement, for example, but the blossoming of democracy in some countries and the demand for it in others is partly an unexpected result of the consequences of climate change on global food prices. On the other hand, the interplay of these factors will drive complex crisis situations in which domestic policy, international policy, humanitarian assistance, and security converge in new ways. Areas of concern Several regional hotspots frequently come up in the international debate on climate change, migration, and conflict. Climate migrants in northwest Africa, for example, are causing communities across the region to respond in different ways, often to the detriment of regional and international security concerns. Political and social instability in the region plays into the hands of organizations such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. And recent developments in Libya, especially the large number of weapons looted from depots after strongman Moammar Qaddafi’s regime fell— which still remain unaccounted for—are a threat to stability across North Africa. Effective solutions need not address all of these issues simultaneously but must recognize the layers of relationships among them. And these solutions must also recognize that these variables will not always intersect in predictable ways. While some migrants may flee floodplains, for example, others may migrate to them in search of greater opportunities in coastal urban areas.16 Bangladesh, already well known for its disastrous floods, faces rising waters in the future due to climate-driven glacial meltdowns in neighboring India. The effects can hardly be over. In December 2008 the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., ran an exercise that explored the impact of a flood that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring India. The result: the exercise predicted a new wave of migration would touch off religious conflicts, encourage the spread of contagious diseases, and cause vast damage to infrastructure. India itself is not in a position to absorb climate-induced pressures—never mind foreign climate migrants. The country will contribute 22 percent of global population growth and have close to 1.6 billion inhabitants by 2050, causing demographic developments that are sure to spark waves of internal migration across the country. Then there’s the Andean region of South America, where melting glaciers and snowcaps will drive climate, migration, and security concerns. The average rate of glacial melting has doubled over the past few years, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.17 Besides Peru, which faces the gravest consequences in Latin America, a number of other Andean countries will be massively affected, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia. This development will put water security, agricultural production, and power generation at risk—all factors that could prompt people to leave their homes and migrate. The IPCC report argues that the region is especially vulnerable because of its fragile ecosystem.18 Finally, China is now in its fourth decade of ever-growing internal migration, some of it driven in recent years by environmental change. Today, across its vast territory, China continues to experience the full spectrum of climate change related consequences that have the potential to continue to encourage such migration. The Center for a New American Security recently found that the consequences of climate change and continued internal migration in China include “water stress; increased droughts, flooding, or other severe events; increased coastal erosion and saltwater inundation; glacial melt in the Himala as that could affect hundreds of millions; and shifting agricultural zones”—all of which will affect food supplies. 19 Pg. 1-7 *asteroids impactCloud computing is also critical to space situational awareness – solves asteroids and debris Johnston et al 9 [Steven, PhD in computer engineering and MEng degree in software engineering, specializes in cloud-based architecture, Kenji Takeda, Solutions Architect and Technical Manager for the Microsoft Research Connections EMEA team, has extensive experience in Cloud Computing, Hugh Lewis, professor at University of Southampton, specialist in space situational awareness, Simon Cox, professor of Computational Methods and Director of the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing at University of Southampton, Graham Swinerd, professor at University of Southampton, specializes in space situational awareness, “Cloud Computing for Planetary Defense”, http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/71883/1/John_09.pdf, October 2009, 3/31/15] Abstract¶ In this paper we demonstrate how a cloud-based computing architecture can be used for planetary defense and space situational awareness (SSA). We show how utility compute can facilitate both a financially economical and highly scalable solution for space debris and near-earth object impact analysis. As we improve our ability to track smaller space objects, and satellite collisions occur, the volume of objects being tracked vastly increases, increasing computational demands. Propagating trajectories and calculating conjunctions becomes increasingly time critical, thus requiring an architecture which can scale with demand. The extension of this to tackle the problem of a future near-earth object impact is discussed, and how cloud computing can play a key role in this civilisation-threatening scenario.¶ Introduction¶ Space situational awareness includes scientific and operational aspects of space weather, near-earth objects and space debris. This project is part of an international effort to provide a global response strategy to the threat of a Near Earth Object (NEO) impacting the earth, led by the United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Use of Space (UN-COPUOS). The impact of a NEO – an asteroid or comet – is a severe natural hazard but is unique in that technology exists to predict and to prevent it, given sufficient warning. As such, the International Spaceguard survey has identified nearly 1,000 potentially hazardous asteroids >1km in size although NEOs smaller than one kilometre remain predominantly undetected, exist in far greater numbers and impact the Earth more frequently1. Impacts by objects larger than 100 m (twice the size of the asteroid that caused the Barringer crater in Arizona) could occur with little or no warning, with the energy of hundreds of nuclear weapons, and are “devastating at potentially unimaginable levels”2 (Figure 1). The tracking and prediction of potential NEO impacts is of international importance, particularly with regard to disaster management. Space debris poses a serious risk to satellites and space missions. Currently Space Track3 publishes the locations of about 10,000 objects that are publicly available. These include satellites, operational and defunct, space debris from missions and space junk. It is believed that there are about 19,000 objects with a diameter over 10cm. Even the smallest space junk travelling at about 17,000 miles per hour can cause serious damage; the Space Shuttle has undergone 92 window changes due to debris impact, resulting in concerns that a more serious accident is imminent4, and the International Space Station has to execute evasion manoeuvres to avoid debris. There are over 300,000 objects over 1cm in diameter and there is a desire to track most , if not all of these. By improving ground sensors and introducing sensors on satellites the Space Track database will increase in size. By tracking and predicting space debris behaviour in more detail we can reduce collisions as the orbital environment becomes ever more crowded.¶ Cloud computing provides the ability to trade computation time against costs. It also favours an architecture which inherently scales, providing burst capability. By treating compute as a utility, compute cycles are only paid for when they are used. Here we present a cloud application framework to tackle space debris tracking and analysis, that is being extended for NEO impact analysis. Notably, in this application propagation and conjunction analysis results in peak compute loads for only 20% of the day, with burst capability required in the event of a collision when the number of objects increases dramatically; the Iridium-33 Cosmos-2251 collision in 2009 resulted in an additional 1,131 trackable objects (Figure 2). Utility computation can quickly adapt to these situations consuming more compute, incurring a monetary cost but keeping computation wall clock time to a constant . In the event of a conjunction event being predicted, satellite operators would have to be quickly alerted so they could decide what mitigating action to take.¶ In this work we have migrated a series of discrete manual computing processes to the Azure cloud platform to improve capability and scalability. It is the initial prototype for a broader space situational awareness platform. The workflow involves the following steps: obtain satellite position data, validate data, run propagation simulation, store results, perform conjunction analysis, query satellite object, and visualise.¶ Satellite locations are published twice a day by Space Track, resulting in bi-daily high workloads. Every time the locations are published, all previous propagation calculations are halted, and the propagator starts recalculating the expected future orbits. Every orbit can be different, albeit only slightly from a previous estimate, but this means that all conjunction analysis has to be recomputed. The quicker this workflow is completed the quicker possible conjunction alerts can be triggered, providing more time for mitigation.¶ The concept project uses Windows Azure as a cloud provider and is architected as a data-driven workflow consuming satellite locations and resulting in conjunction alerts, as shown in Figure 3. Satellite locations are published in a standard format know as a Two-Line Element (TLE) that fully describes a spacecraft and its orbit. Any TLE publisher can be consumed, in this case the Space Track website, but also ground observation station data. The list of TLEs are first separated into individual TLE Objects, validated and inserted into a queue. TLE queue objects are consumed by comparator workers which check to see if the TLE exists; new TLEs are added to an Azure Table and an update notification added to the Update Queue.¶ TLEs in the update notification queue are new and each requires propagation; this is an embarrassingly parallel computation that scales well across the cloud. Any propagator can be used. We currently support NORAD SGP4 propagator and a custom Southampton simulation (C++) code. Each propagated object has to be compared with all other propagations to see if there is a conjunction (predicted close approach). Any conjunction source or code can be used, currently only SGP4 is implemented; plans are to incorporate more complicated filtering and conjunction analysis routines as they become available. Conjunctions result in alerts which are visible in the Azure Satellite tracker client. The client uses Virtual Earth to display the orbits. Ongoing work includes expanding the Virtual Earth client as well as adding support for custom clients by exposing the data through a REST interface. This pluggable architecture ensures that additional propagators and conjunction codes can be incorporated, and as part of ongoing work we intend to expand the available analysis codes.¶ The framework demonstrated here is being extended as a generic space situational service bus to include NEO impact predictions. This will exploit the pluggable simulation code architecture and the cloud’s burst computing capability in order to allow refinement of predictions for disaster management simulations and potential emergency scenarios anywhere on the globe.¶ Summary¶ We have shown how a new architecture can be applied to space situational awareness to provide a scalable robust data-driven architecture which can enhance the ability of existing disparate analysis codes by integrating them together in a common framework. By automating the ability to alert satellite owners to potential conjunction scenarios we reduce the potential of conjunction oversight and decrease the response time, thus making space safer. This framework is being extended to NEO trajectory and impact analysis to help improve planetary defencs capability for all. Asteroid strikes are likely and cause extinctionCasey, 6/30/15 – environmental, scientific, and technological reporter for CBS News (Michael, “On Asteroid Day, raising awareness that Earth could get hit again”, CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroid-day-raising-awareness-earth-could-be-hit-by-asteroids/, //11) "Asteroids are the only natural disaster we know how to prevent and protecting our planet, families and communities is the goal of Asteroid Day," said Grigorij Richters, producer of the asteroid-themed movie "51 Degrees North" and co-founder of Asteroid Day. "Asteroids teach us about the origins of life, but they also can impact the future of our species and life on Earth." Most of what people know about asteroids comes from movies like "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon," or because they've heard that an asteroid triggered global disasters that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
NASA seems to concur that the threat has to be taken seriously. Earlier this month, NASA signed a deal with the National Nuclear Security Administration to look into the nuclear option should they discover that an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. The space agency currently only tracks about 10 percent of the 1 million asteroids in our solar system with the potential to strike Earth, according to Asteroid Day.org. The European Space Agency, meanwhile, convened a meeting Tuesday with emergency response officers from Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom to discuss how to respond to the asteroid threat. "Planets can't hit us, while comet debris doesn't survive to strike our surface. But asteroids -- chunks of stone or metal -- arrive by the thousands every day, and are responsible for nearly all of the 50,000 catalogued meteorites," Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said. "The largest asteroids are fascinating to observe, while the hazardous ones need to be watched while defenses are being conceived." In December, astrophysicist Dr. Brian May (who was also a founding member and lead guitarist of the rock band Queen) joined Lord Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal; Bill Nye, the Science Guy; and astronauts Rusty Schweickart, Ed Lu and Tom Jones to launch Asteroid Day. In their mission statement, they said their goal was nothing short of ensuring the survival of future generations. As part of that, they also announced the 100X Declaration, which calls for a 100-fold increase in detection and monitoring of asteroids. "The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it becomes that the human race has been living on borrowed time," May said. "Asteroid Day and the 100X Declaration are ways for the public to contribute to bring about an awareness that we can get hit anytime. A city could be wiped out any time because we just don't know enough about what's out there." – detection neededAt least 10% are undetectedRobson, 7/3/15 – reporter for National Post (John, National Post, “Fear the asteroid, humanity’s greatest threat!”, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-robson-fear-the-asteroid-humanitys-greatest-threat, //11) How big is the danger? NBC’s story on Asteroid Day noted with curious complacency that “based on a statistical analysis, NASA says it’s found more than 90 percent of the estimated 981 asteroids” a kilometre or more wide capable of annihilating civilization. So that missing nearly 10 per cent leaves, um, almost 100 lurking undetected, right guys? Plus NASA hasn’t found 90 per cent of those over 140 meters wide, let alone the “hundreds of thousands” of smaller ones still capable of smashing a city. I’d grade this “incomplete” at best. If you’re not worried yet, consider that the goal of Asteroid Day is to increase the number of near-Earth objects found from 1,000 to 100,000 a year. A year? Man, they’ll have to queue up to dive onto us. – tech discussions keyTechnical discussions about asteroids are crucial to educating the publicMorrison et al 2 – Morrison: NASA Astrobiology Institute; Harris: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Sommer: RAND Corporation; Chapman: Southwest Research Institute, Boulder; Carusi: IAS, Roma (David Morrison, Alan W. Harris, Geoff Sommer, Clark R. Chapman, Andrea Carusi, “Dealing with the Impact Hazard”, 6/8/02, http://www.disastersrus.org/emtools/spacewx/NEO_Chapter_1.pdf, //11) While NEO research embodies classic scientific objectives, studies of impact hazards form an applied science that may be judged by different criteria. In determining an NEO hazard mitigation strategy, we must consider the reaction of society. Such considerations are familiar to specialists in other fields of natural hazard, such as meteorology (with respect to storm forecasts) and seismology. NEO hazard specialists have the added difficulty of explaining a science that is arcane (orbital dynamics) and beyond personal experience (no impact disaster within recorded history). As the NEO community has begun to realize, it has a social responsibility to ensure that its message is not just heard but comprehended by society at large. The adoption of the Torino Impact Scale (Binzel, 1997, 2000) was a notable first step toward public communication, although the unique aspects of NEO detection and warning (particularly the evolution of uncertainty) continue to cause communications difficulties (Chapman, 2000). – at: no deflectionWe have deflection capabilities, but detection is keyWall, 13 – senior writer at space.com (Mike, Space.com, “How Humanity Could Deflect a Giant Killer Asteroid”, 11/22/13, http://www.space.com/23530-killer-asteroid-deflection-saving-humanity.html, //11) Humanity has the skills and know-how to deflect a killer asteroid of virtually any size, as long as the incoming space rock is spotted with enough lead time, experts say. Our species could even nudge off course a 6-mile-wide (10 kilometers) behemoth like the one that dispatched the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. We'd likely have to slam multiple spacecraft into a gigantic asteroid over a period of several decades to do the job, but the high stakes would motivate such a strong and sustained response, researchers say. "If you can hit it with a kinetic impactor, you can hit it with 10 or 100 of them," former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, chairman and CEO of the nonprofit B612 Foundation, which is devoted to protecting Earth against asteroid strikes, said during a news conference last month. "And I would submit to you that if we were finding an asteroid that's going to wipe out all life on Earth, or the majority of life on Earth, that funding is not an issue for launching 100 of them," Lu added. Undiscovered asteroids Lu and four other spaceflyers spoke Oct. 25 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. A primary purpose of the event was to draw attention to the danger asteroids pose to human civilization and life on Earth, and to discuss ways to mitigate the threat.
The Russian meteor came out of nowhere, evading detection by the various instruments that are scanning the heavens for potentially hazardous objects. And there are many more such space rocks out there, gliding through deep space unknown and unnamed. To date, scientists have discovered about 10,000 near-Earth objects, or NEOs — just 1 percent of the 1 million or so asteroids thought to come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits. So the top priority of any asteroid-defense effort should be a stepped-up detection campaign, Lu said. "Our challenge is to find these asteroids first, before they find us," he said. "You cannot deflect an asteroid you haven't yet found." – at: psychoAsteroids are real threats – psychoanalysis does not disprove our factual claimsYudkowsky, 8 – Research Fellow and Director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, principal contributor to the Oxford-sponsored Overcoming Biases (Eliezer, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks”, https://intelligence.org/files/CognitiveBiases.pdf, //11) Robert Pirsig said: “The world’s biggest fool can say the sun is shining, but that doesn’t make it dark out.” If you believe someone is guilty of a psychological error, then demonstrate your competence by first demolishing their consequential factual errors. If there are no factual errors, then what matters the psychology? The temptation of psychology is that, knowing a little psychology, we can meddle in arguments where we have no technical expertise—instead sagely analyzing the psychology of the disputants. If someone wrote a novel about an asteroid strike destroying modern civilization, then someone might criticize that novel as extreme, dystopian, apocalyptic; symptomatic of the author’s naive inability to deal with a complex technological society. We should recognize this as a literary criticism, not a scientific one; it is about good or bad novels, not good or bad hypotheses. To quantify the annual probability of an asteroid strike in real life, one must study astronomy and the historical record: no amount of literary criticism can put a number on it. Garreau (2005) seems to hold that a scenario of a mind slowly increasing in capability, is more mature and sophisticated than a scenario of extremely rapid intelligence increase. But that’s a technical question, not a matter of taste; no amount of psychologizing can tell you the exact slope of that curve. It’s harder to abuse heuristics and biases than psychoanalysis. Accusing someone of conjunction fallacy leads naturally into listing the specific details that you think are burdensome and drive down the joint probability. Even so, do not lose track of the real-world facts of primary interest; do not let the argument become about psychology. Despite all dangers and temptations, it is better to know about psychological biases than to not know. Otherwise we will walk directly into the whirling helicopter blades of life. But be very careful not to have too much fun accusing others of biases. That is the road that leads to becoming a sophisticated arguer—someone who, faced with any discomforting argument, finds at once a bias in it. The one whom you must watch above all is yourself. Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” Analyses should finally center on testable real-world assertions. Do not take your eye off the ball. 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. Share with your friends:
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