Global Nuclear War is good

Something I would like to point out before I begin is that the reason I dropped everything as you say is simply because I was mimicking the format you used. But, let"s dissect this, shall we? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> My opponent mentions how biosphere collapse is inevitable, thus the only way to survive is to have nuclear war which will shift our mind. I would like to point out how absurd this is. Decimating our population will not create a mind-shift, why would people decide to care about the Earth because everyone around them has died? People don"t care about the environment because of disconnect, they don"t feel a sense of urgency regarding climate change. Having a nuclear war wouldn"t give them a sense of urgency, if anything they would care less what happens to Earth because everything is dead and now there is no point. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> My opponent also provided some burdens. I would like to scrap those and provide my own. Since my opponent claims solvency, they have the burden of proof, and must prove that a world with nuclear war is better than the status quo. However, I will rebut their own burdens regardless. 1.Yes, we will all die eventually but that"s a silly burden. How can anyone prove the world won"t end at some point? 2.Nuclear war does not stop biosphere collapse. How can you say we are all dead from collapse and then in the same breath say nuclear war will stop what is inevitable? In your own evidence you state the following: "Once the peaks occur (between 2015 and 2020) all bets are off: past that point." We are in 2018 and nothing has happened. But even if you don"t buy that, that is all based on "assumption" as Meadows puts it. What we do know is that if there IS nuclear war, people will die and the environment will suffer. 3.My opponent states some life will remain on Earth but this is Phillips 2000: PHILLIPS 2000 No scientific study has been published since 1990, and very little appears now in the peace or nuclear abolition literature. *It is still important.* With thousands of rocket-launched weapons at "launch-on-warning", any day there could be an all-out nuclear war by accident. The fact that there are only half as many nuclear bombs as there were in the 80's makes no significant difference. Deaths from world-wide starvation after the war would be several times the number from direct effects of the bombs, and the surviving fraction of the human race might then diminish and vanish after a few generations of hunger and disease, in a radioactive environment. Nuclear war causes human extinction. Another good point made by Philips is the following: (I separated the information into paragraphs for clarity). Nuclear war destroys the environment The 1980's research showed that the dust and the smoke would block out a large fraction of the sunlight and the sun's heat from the earth's surface, so it would be dark and cold like an arctic winter. It would take months for the sunlight to get back to near normal. The cloud of dust and smoke would circle the northern hemisphere quickly. Soon it could affect the tropics, and cold would bring absolute disaster for all crops there. Quite likely it would cross the equator and affect the southern hemisphere to a smaller degree. While the temperature at the surface would be low, the temperature of the upper part of the troposphere (5-11 km) would rise because of sunlight absorbed by the smoke, so there would be an absolutely massive temperature inversion. That would keep many other products of combustion down at the levels people breathe, making a smog such as has never been seen before. PYROTOXINS is a word coined for all the noxious vapours that would be formed by combustion of the plastics, rubber, petroleum, and other products of civilization. It is certain that these poisons would be formed, but we do not have quantitative estimates. The amount of combustible material is enormous, and it would produce dioxins, furans, PCB's, cyanides, sulphuric and sulphurous acids, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in amounts that would make current concerns about atmospheric pollution seem utterly trivial. There would also be toxic chemicals like ammonia and chlorine from damaged storage tanks. Another bad environmental thing that would happen is destruction of the ozone layer. The reduction in the ozone layer could be 50% - 70% over the whole northern hemisphere - very much worse than the current losses that we are properly concerned about. Nitrogen oxides are major chemical agents for this. They are formed by combination of the oxygen and nitrogen of the air in any big fire and around nuclear explosions, as they are on a smaller scale around lightning flashes. So after the smoke cleared and the sun began to shine again, there would be a large increase of UV reaching the earth's surface. This is bad for people in several ways, but don't worry about the skin cancers ? not many of the survivors would live long enough for that to matter. UV is also bad for many other living things, notably plankton, which are the bottom layer of the whole marine food chain. There would likely be enough UV to cause blindness in many animals. Humans can protect their eyes if they are aware of the danger. Animals do not know to do that, and blind animals do not survive. Blind insects do not pollinate flowers, so there is another reason why human crops and natural food supplies for animals would fail. Altogether, nuclear winter would be an ecological disaster of the same sort of magnitude as the major extinctions of species that have occurred in the past, the most famous one being 65 million years ago at the cretaceous extinction. Of all the species living at the time, about half became extinct. The theory is that a large meteor made a great crater in the Gulf of California, putting a trillion tons of rock debris into the atmosphere. That is a thousand times as much rock as is predicted for a nuclear war, but the soot from fires blocks sunlight more effectively than rock debris. In nuclear winter there would also be radioactive contamination giving worldwide background radiation doses many times larger than has ever happened during the 3 billion years of evolution. The radiation would notably worsen things for existing species, though it might, by increasing mutations, allow quicker evolution of new species (perhaps mainly insects and grasses) that could tolerate the post-war conditions. (I should just mention that there is no way the radioactivity from a nuclear war could destroy "all life on earth". People must stop saying that. There will be plenty of evolution after a war, but it may not include us.) This also serves to turn my opponent"s NASA argument. Even if there will be mass amounts of cooling, this would lead to"human EXTINCTION. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> My opponent talks about biosphere collapse which is inevitable. They do not even solve for this, as I said before, our mindsets will not be changed. If this is a policy debate (which I think it is), if Con wins on just one stock issue, I win. Thus I am winning. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Nuclear war will not send the human race back 100s of years ago to when there was no industrialization. The Pro has so many contradictions. In their own evidence they say that we have put too much toxic gases into the air. This is their Meadows card: "We have fundamentally altered the nitrogen, carbon and potassium cycles of the planet. It may never go back to an ecosystem in which bipedal mammals with bicameral brains were possible. Or, not for millions of years" We have FUNDAMENTALLY changed our Earth, nuclear war won"t change that. It"s too late. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Nuclear war solves for overpopulation alright. In fact, it"s OVERKILL. We"re going to have human extinction my friends! Even if not everyone dies during the war, they will die when the air becomes toxic and we can"t grow crops and humans are too slow to evolve! But I guess you"re right that we won"t have inequality anymore. Since everyone will be dead. :) My radiation argument was not meant to be a card for extinction. It was an example of the negative effects of nuclear war. No, radiation won"t kill everyone, nor will it kill all the babies, but our toxic environment certainly will. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> As I have said already, minimal regret is a flimsy argument. Both cultures do not exist in harmony because both cultures are dead. But even if they were alive after nuclear war (which they won"t be, trust me), why would that change their mindset? At this point, the Earth is destroyed, crops won"t grow, infrastructure is decimated, what do they even have left? It"s WAY too late to start over. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In their Caldwell 14 evidence, my opponent states that nuclear war may kill 6 billion people but without nuclear war everyone dies. My opponent does not even solve for human extinction. As I have said numerous times, nuclear war LEADS to human extinction. So I guess my opponent is saying that we can solve extinction with extinction? And even if nuclear war didn"t lead to extinction, they still do not solve because the mind shift change argument is flimsy. So anyone watching this debate must make a decision. Do we want extinction in a long time? Or do we want it right now? If you vote for the Pro, you want to die real quick. If you vote Con, you want to live longer. Also going back to burdens, my burden was that the Pro has to prove the world with nuclear war is better than without. As I have shown you, it isn"t. Thus I win this debate.