Energy Citations Database

I will admit I am straight stealing this from the Dartmouth Wiki.

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/advancedsearch.jsp

This will allow you to find a ton of sources on any energy related task. The problem is that many of them are not linked from this, it just has the citations.

Why this rules- usually you have to go to a variety of online/library resources and do several searches to cover all your bases. While this doesn't contain everything you would ever need, it is VERY comprehensive in terms of things written about/for government energy agencies/proposals.

The States CP – Part 2- Theory

Teams seem to think its impossible to beat the states CP on theory. For a while during the 90’s, this may have been true. The last few domestic topics, however, have seen the states CP (and two related counterplans- the interstate compact/lopez and the constitutional amendment) run amok. I now believe that it is possible to beat this CP on theory in front of at least 60% of judges on the national circuit. Here are the arguments that you should make:

Reciprocity- reciprocity provides a guideline for dealing with arbitrary negative counter interpretations like we only get the states CP or other such nonsense (used to answer limits arguments related to international fiat). Reciprocity is the idea that the fiat playing ground should be relatively level. The states CP, particularly if it also involves federal action, is clearly not reciprocal with USFG action. A related point is that if the CP takes extra steps to spike out of solvency arguments like mandate uniformity or unevidenced planks that respond to 1AC evidence, this is not reciprocal as the affirmative fiat is limited by the topic and cannot be used to spike out of disads,. (though on the affirmative you could make the argument that CP’s expressly spiking out of aff offense legitimates intrinsicness arguments)

Real world- this means two things. First, no real world policy maker can chose between either the USFG acting or state action. This would mean it is anti educational to put the judge into that position. Second, little comparative literature is written that assumes uniform implementation by all states and territories vs the federal government. Uniform fiat allows the negative to gain a unilateral advantage- they get to assert it solves as well and people assume that its the aff burden to read evidence that uniform state action will not solve. You should also make an argument that since there is no evidence that assumes what the cp actually does that A) theoretical objections should be given more weight, and B) that even if you don’t go for theory the judge should lean affirmative on solvency arguments

There are other potential offensive arguments you can make, but I generally think it is better to select a few and explain them well.

One thing I would add is a voting issue argument about deterrence, I would phrase it as such: teams will use the states CP as a generic crutch if judges let them get away with it- voting against it forces teams to develop more case specific strategies which is better for topic education.

Now, how to deal with the common negative arguments

You must justify the term federal government
-Justification is a burden proved by solvency – not comparative action between agents- no aff can justify the USFG vs the everyone in the world be nice
-Disads can test the agent in a more fair manner
-reciprocity means they should test the agent by fiating a single state- they can read modeling solvency evidence and we can have a real debate

Its predictable- it’s the states counterplan
-debate theory has evolved to the point where the states cp is absurd- its more abusive than basically anything yet is allowed based on tradition
-evidence not debate practice should determine predictability- no evidence is written about the CP

It’s non topical- therefore its negative ground
-topicallity is a necessary but insufficient determination of fairness-the anarchy and world government counterplans are non topical

Requiring federal key warrants serves to limit the topic by reducing the affs that can be run strategically
-this limiting function warps education- it forces teams to the margins to try and find silly tricks to beat the states CP- this is anti educational


That’s pretty much all the specific states CP arguments I can think off of the top of my head, feel free to post any I missed in the comments.

The States CP-Part 1

It is pretty stupid to chose your aff based entirely on the states CP. I know it will probably be a huge generic this year, so it may make sense to have it be a factor in your decision, but making it a heavily weighted factor seems silly. Some reasons:

1. Lopez- there is no aff that has an answer to the states CP in a world of the lopez CP. For those who don't know, the lopez cp has the supreme court extend jurisdiction needed to do the plan to the states. For example, ruling that electricity transmission is not a form of interstate commerce, or that the states can regulate Indian country for example. In a world of this cp, any federal key warrant is fiated away. To beat this CP you must either impact turn the net benefit, go for theory, or have a disad to state action/devolution- your aff is basically meaningless. Many people who feel that "only the USFG CAN do it" is an answer to the states CP are quickly humbled by the lopez counterplan.

2. Positive incentives- these affs have zero answer to the fiat world of a states counterplan. Any money put up by the federal government, say a tax credit for wind, can be put up by the states in the form of a lump sum payment. This creates the same market effect that federal action would.

3.Multi plank- these CP's do more than just the plan- for instance if the aff claimed a soft power advantage they would have the states do the plan and something additional to boost soft power.

4. There is never a reason the states CP achieves ZERO solvency, only reasons it achieves less solvency. This is problematic for two reasons: first, most aff advantages are not linear, they are threshold issues- the cp may achieve less solvency but still solve ENOUGH to avoid the affirmatives impacts. Second, many of the reasons the states do not solve are often unrelated to the aff's advantages. For example, the 1AC will read RPS with a pollution and grid advantage, and then say federal action is key to business confidence. Unfortunately, business confidence is not really necessary to solve either of those advantages. And even if it were- no solvency take out ever goes far enough as to say the states will be unable to solve X, which means terminal impact of Y. Instead they are written to say the USFG will be nebulously better than the states. At the end of the round a judge must compare this amorphous

solvency deficit with a risk of politics and that generally doesn't work out well for the aff.

5, In order to win a solvency deficit, you must not only win that the states don't solve your advantage, you have to win your advantage. Many times an aff will spend a lot of time on states don't solve only to drop case defense or not extend the advantage their solvency arguments pertain too.

Basically- most affs do not have a STRATEGY to deal with the states counterplan. The states counterplan is a strategy (although a simplistic one): read a cp that pushes the theoretical limits to suck up most of the case and shift the focus from the topic to a generic like politics, thus allowing the neg to dedicate all their research time to one issue and not have to deal with a wide range of affirmatives. There are relatively few answers, so all arguments can be blocked out in advance, whereas very few 1AR's are ready with blocks to extend answers to the states counterplan. Aff teams hope to be able to bypass doing any of this work by having a "trick" like federal jurisdiction or some such nonsense.

The problem with the states counterplan, preparation wise and strategically, is two fold

1, In reality the states never act in a uniform fashion, so no one writes comparative evidence about federal vs all 50 states and territories. Yes there are minor exceptions, but for the most part this is a capital T truth. Scholars who work in the field of energy do not spend a lot of time writing about hypothetical uniform state action.

2, The negative gets away with way to much theoretically- fiating things they have no evidence on, ridiculous devolution, and the nature of uniformity itself.

Cutting a Large File Part 2

The next thing we have to deal with is how to prevent overlap within the group. It has many down sides, but the only way to avoid overlap is generally to divide mediums- i.e. one person take books, another take google, another take lexis , another take certain journal databases etc. Even this approach isn't perfect- journals are sometimes on lexis or specific articles will be in a book etc. but other than every person telling every other person the name and author of every single article they read this is the best way to do it. A limited amount of communication can also prevent this smaller risk of overlap reducing the burden of wading through doe

Why is avoiding overlap so important? It wastes time. If two people cut the same article, that is time that could have been spent cutting a different article gone forever, particularly if the article in question is long- say a law review article of 50-60k words. Also, you usually won't figure this out till the sorting process which could waste more time. Overlap is highly likely because many articles talk about multiple issues related to the topic. So if you are research an ethanol negative, and one person is supposed to write the warming disad and another person is supposed to cut the food prices DA, many of the better articles on ethanol will discuss both. So unless everyone in the group is ignoring all good cards that aren't on their particular topic you will have overlap (if they are ignoring them it creates the chance that you will miss a lot obviously).

So now you each have your area, you've divided up the research medium and cut your cards. You've sent emails notifying people about new arguments you've found cards on so they can think about them/look for cards. Now what do you do?

An important organizational thing is to organize a complete file at least 3 times before you are done with the file. So after a few days, you all compile your cards and produce a roughly organized file. This seems annoying to many kids because since they don't have experience organizing things this takes them forever. If you have 300 pages of cards it should take you (with a document map) about 45 minutes for 1 person to organize roughly. With 2-3 people this can be wrapped up in a Simpsons episode easily. Now you have the roughly organized file, you need to find all the holes in it and then start over researching those. Most people wait till the last minute and hope that prayer alone will guarantee they have all the evidence they need for their file. Remember the permits list in the last post- you need lots of cards both ways on all those issues (for the aff and the neg).

You do this 2-3 times depending on how much time you have. Now you have a several hundred page file, its time to impose the quality control. A few guidelines

-you will never need more than 5 cards on the issue- almost any issue. By issue I mean something small, like "Warming anthropogenic", in a warming file you may have hundreds of these issues, but never in a debate will you read more than 5 cards on that or any other issue really, so find the 5 best, and delete the rest

-Best to worst- organize them on the block so that the best card is first, second best card is second etc. This way you will read your best cards all the time, and if you run out of time you haven't missed as much as if your best card is 3^rd

-have specific headers- don't just say "Permits hurt economy" subdivide among warrants, like "Permits hurt economy- Electricity prices" and "Permits Hurt Economy- Speculation". Obviously this process can become infinitely regressive, but remember you don't want a lot of 1 card per page so it's a balance between the two.

-certain arguments have constraints that make some evidence better than others even if the card itself is not better in argument quality- dates for uniqueness evidence, source for issues where bias is obvious/a factor- take this into account

Formatting Test

Permits create cartels who drive up prices

Ross McKitrick Associate Professor and Director Graduate Studies Department of Economics University of Guelph, Ph.D. in economics from the University of British Columbia, Committee on House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality June 26, 2008

-- Cap-and-trade programs are more damaging to the economy than emission taxes. Capand- trade creates a cartel among the permit holders, allowing them to force up consumer prices and earn windfall profits. One study found that reducing US greenhouse gas emissions by 5% using cap-and-trade would cost 10 times as much as using a revenueneutral carbon tax. -- The monetary value of permits trading systems is not new wealth, it is a measure of the wealth transfers created by the policy. When industry leaders lobby for a cap-and-trade system, they are asking the government to create a highly profitable industry cartel that would be illegal for them to create themselves.

Pasting from word??

Question for people who use blogspot- is there a way to cut and paste out of a word document into the blogspot post business and maintain the word formatting - i.e. underlining , bolding etc?Thanks

Good Articles 7-1-08

Oil shock helps put global warming on G8's back burnerEconomic Times - Gurgaon,Haryana,IndiaA year ago, on the back of blunt warnings by UN scientists, global warmingdominated the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Overcoming fierce US resistance,...<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Oil_shock_helps_put_global_warming_on_G8s_back_burner/articleshow/3183175.cms>

Global warming: Government puts carbon capture on fast trackguardian.co.uk - UKThe government has stepped up the pace of change in the battle againstglobal warming by announcing a shortlist of four bidders pre-qualifying forits ...<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/01/climatechange.fossilfuels>

Details dampen global warming goodwillThe Australian - Sydney,AustraliaAfter today's Newspoll results, the Prime Minister will be even more awarethat public goodwill towards fighting global warming evaporates morequickly the ...<http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23949801-5014047,00.html>

G8 Must Consider the Security Risks of Global WarmingCenter For American Progress - Washington,DC,USAWhile there have been some flickers of recognition—most notably inEurope—about the destabilizing effects of global warming, the nationalsecurity community ...<http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/g8_ogden_podesta_column.html>

Oil retreats after striking new peakThe Australian - Sydney,AustraliaOIL prices settled slightly lower in New York, as a budding rally to anintraday peak was cooled by evidence of sinking US demand. ...<http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23950539-5005200,00.html>

A Report on the End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of ...Trading Markets (press release) - Los Angeles,CA,USAChris Nelder is a self-taught energy expert who has intensively studiedpeak oil for five years and written hundreds of articles on peak oil andenergy in ...<http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1723886/>

The US Offshore Drilling Argument: The Debate Between Now vs LaterThe Oil Drum - USAI believe that it makes sense to start the long process to drill now partlybecause of the expected impacts of peak oil, and partly because technical...<http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4215>

Stock market feels pressure of crude oil costs, other worriesDallas Morning News - Dallas,TX,USACrude oil prices spiked from $100 a barrel to $140 a barrel. "Unexpectedevents like that can derail the very best, most solid and believablerally," Mr. ...<http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-IQmain_01bus.ART0.State.Edition1.4d7a433.html>

Oil Goes Up, Up And Away!istockAnalyst.com - Salem,OR,USA"The decisions made by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bankhelped the devaluation of the dollar, which pushed up oil prices," Khelilsaid ...<http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2350520&title=Oil_Goes_Up_Up_And.html>

High oil prices bring a mixed bag for Texas' economyHouston Chronicle - United StatesBy CLAY ROBISON AUSTIN — Even with record-high oil prices, the statetreasury isn't awash in oil money, as it was in the days when black goldwas the ...<http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5865048.html>

Bets on Oil, at 15-Month Low, Face US Limits: Chart of DayBloomberg - USAThe chart of the day shows oil prices (white line) and open interest (redline) since the start of 2007. Futures contracts peaked at a record 1.58million ...<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aKAOLTd34y4o&refer=us>

California’s Climate Plan Snowball Starts Its RollCalifornia Progress Report - Oakland,CA,USAOf considerable significance, the Draft Scoping Plan emphasizes the WesternClimate Initiative’s regional approach to cap-and-trade. ...<http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/07/californias_cli.html>

How to Tackle Greenhouse GasesWashington Post - United StatesBjorn Lomborg's June 26 op-ed column, "A Better Way Than Cap and Trade,"got it backward when it comes to solving climate change. ...<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/30/AR2008063001962.html>

Truckers Drive Home Idea of Caution on Climate BillsEP Magazine - Dallas,TX,USAExpressing concern over the impact of cap-and-trade legislation, a toptrucking industry official urged Congress to take a cautious approach toclimate ...<http://www.eponline.com/articles/64787/>