6 Solvency Cards Neg Solvency Gabe & Bob

Solvency Cards

Substantially Cutting US Emissions Is Impossible and Globally Ineffective

Alex Knapp, "Global warming alternatives in the face of the failed Kyoto Treaty," 2001
Politically and economically speaking, it is simply unfeasible for the United States to embark on
a large emissions abatement program. The technology simply does not exist to both maintain and
improve current standards of living and substantially cut emissions. Moreover, because of rising
emissions from developing nations, it is unlikely that such abatement on the part of the U.S.
alone would substantially mitigate the effects of global warming. Due to this fact, alternatives to
unilateral emissions abatement must be developed. One such alternative is the use of plants, both
on land and in the oceans, to decrease overall CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Potentially, this
could be accomplished by reforestation on land, or plankton seeding in the oceans.

Solar Power Takes Up Too Much Land And Silicon

Pablo Paster (Sustainability Engineer at ClimateCHECK), “Could The US Meet Its Energy Needs With
Solar Power Alone?” April 2008 According
to Dan Berger, senior project designer at SPG Solar, we receive about 6.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per
square meter of solar energy per day, or 2,373 kWh per square meter per year. At 12 percent
efficiency, the solar panels generate 285 kWh per year. The average American used 12,000 kWh in
2003, so each person would need around 42 square meters of solar panels (about 450 square feet).
At 12,000 kWh per capita, electricity demand is roughly 3.6 trillion kWh, or the equivalent of 1,200
coal-fired power plants running full-time. To generate 3.6 trillion kWh per year, we would need to
install about 12.5 billion square meters of solar panels, or around 4,883 square miles. This is clearly
a lot higher than the number that you had heard; about 70 x 70 miles. If we assume we can find enough
land for all of those solar panels, would a project of this scale be achievable? A typical solar panel
contains between 800 and 1,570 grams of silicon (the high-grade material with which solar panels and
computer chips are made) per square meter. If we assume an average of 1,185 grams, we would need
14,812,500 metric tons of solar-grade silicon. The projected annual production of silicon by 2012 is
144,000 metric tons, which means that it would take over 100 years to meet our needs of silicon to
make all those solar panels! And that is if we assume a complete freeze on computer chip
manufacture and solar panel demand in the rest of the world.

Humans Can’t Solve Global Warming

ARTHUR B. ROBINSON, NOAH E. ROBINSON, AND WILLIE SOON, “Environmental Effects of
Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2007)
Hydrocarbon use and atmospheric CO2 do not correlate with the observed temperatures. Solar
activity correlates quite well. Correlation does not prove causality, but non-correlation proves
non-causality. Human hydrocarbon use is not measurably warming the earth. Moreover, there is
a robust theoretical and empirical model for solar warming and cooling of the Earth (8,19,49,50).
The experimental data do not prove that solar activity is the only phenomenon responsible for
substantial Earth temperature fluctuations, but they do show that human hydrocarbon use is not
among those phenomena.
6 Solvency Cards Neg Solvency Gabe & Bob

Massive Alternative Energy Incentives Cause Virtually No Change

ARTHUR B. ROBINSON, NOAH E. ROBINSON, AND WILLIE SOON, “Environmental
Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” Journal of American Physicians and
Surgeons (2007)
Political calls for a reduction of U.S. hydrocarbon use by 90%, thereby eliminating 75% of
America’s energy supply, are obviously impractical. Nor can this 75% of U.S. energy be replaced
by alternative “green” sources. Despite enormous tax subsidies over the past 30 years, green
sources still provide only 0.3% of U.S. energy.

Converting to Biofuels Requires All of the Land Used For Agriculture

Professor Martin Hoffert, “Beyond Fossil Fuels,” 2000
Yes, overcoming the low-density problem brings up inevitable land-use issues. Let me give you
an example. Say that by 2050 you wanted to supply ten terawatts of power -- or ten trillion watts,
which equals the current total energy consumption of all humankind -- and you wanted to do it
with biomass energy. You would need an area equal approximately to 10 percent of the Earth's
land surface area. That's equal to all the land that's used in human agriculture right now. If you
needed 30 terawatts generated by biomass, you would need three times as much land.

Ethanol Is An Inefficient Substitute for Gasoline

Jeff Goodell, The Ethanol Scam: One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles, Rolling
Stone, August 9 2007

But as a gasoline substitute, ethanol has big problems: Its energy density is one-third less than
gasoline, which means you have to burn more of it to get the same amount of power. It also has a
nasty tendency to absorb water, so it can't be transported in existing pipelines and must be
distributed by truck or rail, which is tremendously inefficient. Nor is all ethanol created equal. In
Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 -- that is, when you add up
the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the
energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That's a better deal than gasoline,
which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only
1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source. "Corn ethanol is essentially a way
of recycling natural gas," says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared
Energy Blog.