Tampa Prep 2009-2010 Impact Defense File
AT: Industrial Agricutlure
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- AT: Iran Attacks Israel
AT: Industrial AgricutlureImpossible to solve industrial agriculture. Stuart Staniford, 1/22/2008. Stuart Staniford is a consultant (Invicta Consulting) who earned a PhD in Physics (UC Davis) with an MS in Computer Science (UC Davis) and lead editor of The Oil Drum. “The Fallacy of Reversibility,” The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3481. This implies that the process of industrialization and development is a reversible process. We in the developed world have evolved from low-energy high-agriculture societies into a high-energy low-agriculture society. So the thinking goes that we can/should/will reverse that process and go back to something like what we were 200 years ago (at least on these large macro-economic variables). Now, coming from a background as a scientist, there are many reversible processes familiar in science (and indeed in everyday life), but there are also a lot of irreversible processes. Some examples of reversible processes - if you lift up a weight, you can set it back down again into the same position it was in before. If you blow up a balloon, then, up to a certain point, you can let the air out and get back more or less the uninflated balloon you had before you started. If you pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir, you can let it down again, and the lower reservoir will be in little different condition than if you hadn't bothered. If you freeze a liquid by cooling it, you can warm it up again and have the same liquid. Here are some examples of irreversible processes. If you let grape juice ferment into wine, there's no way to get grape juice back. If you bake a cake in the oven, there's no way to turn it back into cake dough. If you ice and decorate the cake, but then accidentally drop it on the floor, there's no way to pick it up and have anything approaching the same cake as if you hadn't dropped it. So when you industrialize a society, is that a reversible process? Can you take it on a backward path to a deindustrialized society that looks in the important ways like the society you had before the industrialization? As far as I can see, the "second wave" peak oil writers treat it as fairly obvious that this is both possible and desirable. It appears to me that it is neither possible or desirable, but at a minimum, someone arguing for it should seriously address the question. And it is this failure that I am calling the Fallacy of Reversibility. It is most pronounced in Kunstler, who in addition to believing we need a much higher level of involvement in agriculture also wants railways, canals, and sailing ships back, and is a strong proponent of nineteenth century urban forms. I am going to christen this general faction of the peak oil community reversalists. This encompasses people advocating a return to earlier food growing or distribution practices (the local food movement), folks wanting to bring back the railways and tramcars, people believing that large scale corporations will all collapse, that the Internet will fail and we need to "make our own music and our own drama down the road. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls. We're going to need violin and banjo players and playwrights and scenery-makers, and singers." And before moving on, I stress that I'm not making an argument that our time is in all ways better than earlier times and that nostalgia for the past is entirely misplaced. Nor am I making an argument that peak oil does not pose a massive and important challenge to us. Instead, I'm making an argument that society is unlikely to reverse its trajectory of development, regardless of what we might like. Calls for it to do so are a distraction and get in the way of figuring out what we really need to be doing, and what the real options and dangers are. AT: Iran Attacks IsraelIranian threats to destroy Israel are ideological bluster. Ted Galen Carpenter 2007 “Toward a Grand Bargain with Iran” MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mediterranean_quarterly/v018/18.1carpenter.html Such a comment is certainly reprehensible, but does it negate the long-standing realities of deterrence? Israel has between 150 and 300 nuclear weapons of its own. Even if Iran can go forward with its nuclear program, it will not be able to build more than a dozen or so weapons over the next decade—even assuming that the most alarmist predictions of the current state of the program prove valid. Moreover, Israel is moving to expand its submarine fleet to have at least one nuclear-armed submarine on station at all times, giving the country a secure second-strike capability.15 Once that process is complete, Tehran could not hope to launch a "decapitation" sneak attack based on the (already remote) possibility that Israel would be unable to retaliate. As in the case of contemplating an attack on the United States, it would be most unwise for Iran to contemplate attacking Israel. The same realities of deterrence apply, albeit on a smaller scale. In all likelihood, Iranian rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map is merely ideological blather. Israel has more than a sufficient capability to deter an Iranian nuclear attack. Iran will not attack Israel – fear of retaliation is too strong. Barry R. Posen 2006 “A Nuclear-Armed Iran: A Difficult but Not Impossible Policy Problem” CENTURY FOUNDATION http://www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/posen_nuclear-armed.pdf A few fission weapons would horribly damage the state of Israel, and a few fusion weapons would surely destroy it. But neither kind of attack could reliably shield Iran from a devastating response. Israel has had years to work on developing and shielding its nuclear deterrent. It is generally attributed with as many as 200 fission warheads, deliverable by several different methods, including Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile.12 Were Iran to proceed with a weapons program, Israel would surely improve its own capabilities. Though Iran’s population is large, and much of it is dispersed, about a quarter of Iranians (over fifteen million people) live in eight cities conservatively within range of Israel’s Jericho II missile.13 Much of Iran’s economic capacity is also concentrated in these cities.14 Nuclear attacks on these cities, plus some oil industry targets, would destroy Iran as a functioning society and prevent its recovery. There is little in the behavior of the leaders of revolutionary Iran that suggests they would see this as a good trade. Iran won’t attack Israel with nuclear weapons – would be vulnerable to U.S. retaliation. Barry R. Posen 2006 “A Nuclear-Armed Iran: A Difficult but Not Impossible Policy Problem” CENTURY FOUNDATION http://www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/posen_nuclear-armed.pdf On the other hand, it is virtually impossible for Iran to achieve a first-strike capability versus the United States. Any risks that Iran took in its basing mode and alert posture to get ready for a first strike against Israel could easily make it more vulnerable to a first strike from the United States. Spending its nuclear forces on Israel would leave Iran politically and militarily vulnerable to a huge U.S. retaliation. By striking first, it would have legitimated a U.S. nuclear attack, while simultaneously weakening its own deterrent with the weapons it had expended. The United States is the greater threat to Iran because it is much more powerful than Israel, and has actual strategic objectives in the Gulf. It is strategically reasonable for Iran to focus its deterrent energies on the United States, which it can only influence with a secure retaliatory force, capable of threatening U.S. forces and interests in the region.
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