The Rate Debate Slowing
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- AT: Weather = War
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AT: Crop YieldsCuts in crop yields due to warming are negligible Gillis (Environmental specialist staff writer for the New York Times) 2011 (Justin, “Global Warming Reduces Expected Yields of Harvests in Some Countries, Study Says,” May 5, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/science/earth/06warming.html) //CL Some countries saw small gains from the temperature increases, however. And in all countries, the extra carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the air acted as a fertilizer that encouraged plant growth, offsetting some of the losses from rising temperatures caused by that same greenhouse gas. Consequently, the study’s authors found that when the gains in some countries were weighed against the losses in others, the overall global effect of climate change has been small so far: losses of a few percentage points for wheat and corn from what they would have been without climate change. The overall impact on production of rice and soybeans was negligible, with gains in some regions entirely offsetting losses in others. AT: Weather = WarIntense weather doesn't cause violence - post-hoc fallacy Kenny 11 (Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, 8/29/12, "Cloudy with a chance of insurgency," Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/29/cloudy_with_a_chance_of_insurgency?page=0,1) But is the relationship between climate and violence really that clear? First off, even when rainfall and temperature patterns were directly included in Hsiang and colleague's statistical analysis, the association between El Niño years and civil violence remained. In other words, whatever the impact of El Niño on violence, it apparently isn't connected to its effect on precipitation levels or high temperatures in tropical countries. Perhaps, the paper suggests, El Niño's impact on violence is due to the timing of the rainfall, or altered wind patterns, or humidity, or cloud cover -- but those theories are (so far) untested. And these results regarding temperature and precipitation should come as no surprise given earlier studies on the climate-conflict link. In 2010, Halvard Buhaug, a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, re-examined Burke's earlier study of weather and war in Africa and concluded that it didn't stand up to further scrutiny. With more data, he argued, the link between rainfall, temperature, and violence disappeared -- a point accepted by Burke and his colleagues. Second, Hsiang and his co-authors are careful to clarify that they don't think El Niño caused warfare, but rather that it was a contributing factor -- that in many cases, conflicts that would have broken out anyway may have occurred earlier owing to the effects of the El Niño cycle. That fits with the conclusions of a 2008 review of the evidence linking climate to conflict in the Journal of Peace Research, which suggested that any link is contingent on a range of factors from governance through wealth to land-use patterns and "claims of environmental determinism leading seamlessly from climate change to open warfare are suspect." Indeed, saying the weather is responsible for civil war is like saying drought is responsible for famine. At most, weather can be an additional stressor to an environment already made combustible by human activities. For example, experts on the Shining Path insurgency in Peru or the Sudanese conflict might be surprised at the idea that these two conflicts are seen as prime examples of the impact of Pacific weather patterns on civil war, given that both have a whole range of causes (including poverty, twisted ideology, and a cruel and incompetent government and military response in the case of the Shining Path). Geopolitical factors overwhelm Kenny 11 (Charles Kenny, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, 8/29/12, "Cloudy with a chance of insurgency," Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/29/cloudy_with_a_chance_of_insurgency?page=0,1) Second, the analysis points to the relative importance of factors like geopolitics in explaining the outbreak of violence. The second-highest risk of civil war between 1950 and 2004, according to the paper, was in 1989 -- a La Niña year -- part of a dramatic peak in war risk that continued until 1994, and has gone unmatched before or since. That speaks to the impact of the end of the Cold War on civil conflict. The good news is that in the period since the mid-1990s, conflict risk has been on the decline as global cooperation to settle disputes has been on the rise. Even if climate cycles are a short-term influence on conflict, the long-term trends are dominated by factors other than the weather. The argument that we should reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change is beyond reasonable dispute -- but that it will make for a more pacific world is yet to be demonstrated. AT: Ice Caps MeltingNo tipping point—the aff reverses current warming—causes polar ice to come back; kills shipping lanes Science Daily 11 Science Daily Aug. 18, 2011; “ Polar Ice Caps Can Recover from Warmer Climate-Induced Melting, Study Shows”; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110817194235.htm; ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2011) — A growing body of recent research indicates that, in Earth's warming climate, there is no "tipping point," or threshold warm temperature, beyond which polar sea ice cannot recover if temperatures come back down. New University of Washington research indicates that even if Earth warmed enough to melt all polar sea ice, the ice could recover if the planet cooled again. In recent years scientists have closely monitored the shrinking area of the Arctic covered by sea ice in warmer summer months, a development that has created new shipping lanes but also raised concerns about humans living in the region and the survival of species such as polar bears. In the new research, scientists used one of two computer-generated global climate models that accurately reflect the rate of sea-ice loss under current climate conditions, a model so sensitive to warming that it projects the complete loss of September Arctic sea ice by the middle of this century. However, the model takes several more centuries of warming to completely lose winter sea ice, and doing so required carbon dioxide levels to be gradually raised to a level nearly nine times greater than today. When the model's carbon dioxide levels then were gradually reduced, temperatures slowly came down and the sea ice eventually returned. "We expected the sea ice to be completely gone in winter at four times the current level of carbon dioxide but we had to raise it by more than eight times," said Cecilia Bitz, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. "All that carbon dioxide made a very, very warm planet. It was about 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, which caused the Arctic to be completely free of sea ice in winter." Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. 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