1AC
Inherency
1AC Inherency/Solvency
Plan: United States federal government should substantially increase
NOAA’s exploration of the Earth’s oceans.
Increased federal funding for ocean exploration is key to jumpstart
investment for a litany of adaptation technologies and ecosystem research
Avery, 13 [Susan, Director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, “Deep Dea Challenge:
Innovative Partnerships in Ocean Observation” S. HRG. 113–268, accessed 6/15, AR]
The importance of the ocean in daily life, whether you live on the East Coast, the Great Plains,
or the Mountain West, cannot be oversimplified or understated. In short, it is one of the most
fundamental reasons why our planet is capable of supporting life and why we are able to sustain the
economy and way of life that are among our national hallmarks. Our fate has always rested in one way or
another with the ocean and its interaction with the atmosphere, land, and humanity. The ocean plays
a critical role in governing Earth’s climate system helping to regulate global cycles
of heat, water, and carbon. The rates and regional patterns of land temperature and precipitation
depend on the ocean’s physical and chemical balances. It touches us every day, wherever we live through
our climate and weather; rainfall, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and devastating storm surges such as what
we witnessed with Hurricane Sandy. The services the ocean provides—and that we often take for
granted—range from endless inspiration and deep-seated cultural heritage to the very
air we breathe and the rain that waters our crops. Roughly half of the oxygen we breathe and about 80
percent of the water vapor in our atmosphere comes from ocean processes. The ocean feeds us,
processes waste, holds vast stores of mineral and petroleum reserves, and
provides inexpensive transportation of goods and people. Its rich biodiversity is a
potential source for new medicines and an insurance policy for our future. Many of
these things it provides the planet without our intervention; other things we actively seek and extract—
and we will continue to do so.¶ In 2010, maritime economic activities contributed an estimated $258
billion and 2.8 million jobs to the national economy.1 In addition, roughly 41 percent of the Nation’s GDP,
or $6 trillion, including 44 million jobs and $2.4 trillion in wages, was generated in the marine and Great
Lake shoreline counties of the U.S. and territories. 2 The key for the future of the ocean and
for humanity will be to learn how to balance these economic activities with the
natural functioning of the ocean.¶ We know that the ocean is taking up more than 80 percent of
the heat that is generated by rising levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. Excess carbon
dioxide mixed into the upper ocean is lowering the pH of seawater, making it more acidic
and raising the potential for large-scale change at the base of the marine food chain and in the coral reef
ecosystems that are considered the breadbasket of the tropical oceans and an important source of
biodiversity and income for many regions. Excess heat is causing Arctic sea ice to retreat to
levels never before seen, setting up the likelihood of still further melting driven by
positive feedback loops, as well as disruptions to the Arctic ecosystems that have
evolved in an environment partly reliant on ice cover for millions of years. Sea level is also rising,
both as a result of increased melting of terrestrial ice caps and of thermal expansion of the seawater,
resulting in higher probabilities of more frequent and more severe storm surges such as
those associated with Hurricane Sandy. Our ability to build properly designed and
appropriately scaled adaptations into cities and societies around the world is
predicated on our ability to accurately predict how, when, and how much the
ocean will change in the future .¶ For these reasons and many others, our nation must recognize
that the ocean is changing almost before our eyes. Perhaps the question is, not how much can
we afford to invest in research on the ocean, but rather how can we afford not to?
Despite its importance, there remain many unanswered questions about the ocean. It is far more difficult
to observe than the atmosphere. Because the ocean is opaque to most forms of electromagnetic radiation,
satellite observations are limited in the type and resolution of information they can gather. We are
capable of monitoring many surface features, including waves, winds,
temperatures, salinity, carbon, color (a measure of biological productivity), as well
as some large-scale subsurface features. But satellites cannot tell us much about the diversity
of life in the ocean or the many fine-scale dynamic processes at work beneath the surface, nor can they tell
us much about the internal complex biogeochemistry that supports life. Satellites can’t show us the
bottom of the ocean, where volcanic hydrothermal vents sustain rich communities of exotic organisms—
which might answer questions about the early evolution of life. To learn more about these
important parts of the ocean system, we must have more and better eyes in the
ocean and, at the same time, work to surmount the huge challenges of working in a cold, corrosive, and
physically punishing environment.¶ Frontiers in the Ocean¶ Jim Cameron is a visionary who is capable of
looking beyond what we are currently able to see. Let me tell you about another visionary. In the mid1930s, a physicist from Lehigh University named Maurice Ewing sent letters to several oil companies. He
asked them to support a modest research program to see whether acoustic methods used to probe buried
geological structures on land could be adapted to investigate the completely unknown geology of the
seafloor. Ewing later wrote: ‘‘This proposal received no support whatever. I was told that work out in the
ocean could not possibly be of interest to the shareholder and could not rightfully receive one nickel of the
shareholder’s money.’’ 4¶ Ewing did get a $2,000 grant from the Geological Society of America, however,
and he and his students came to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to use its new ocean-going
research ship, Atlantis. The ship and the institution were launched by a $3 million grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation. The scientists launched novel experiments using sound waves to probe the
seafloor. To Ewing, the ocean was annoyingly in the way. To study the seafloor, he and his colleagues had
to learn how to negotiate the intervening water medium. In the process, they unexpectedly made
profound and fundamental discoveries about ocean properties and how sound
propagates through seawater.¶ In 1940, on the eve of war, Woods Hole’s director, Columbus O’Donnell
Iselin, wrote a letter to government officials, suggesting the ways the institution’s personnel and
equipment could be better utilized for the national defense. Soon after, one of Ewing’s students, Allyn
Vine, began incorporating their newly gained knowledge to build instruments called bathythermographs,
which measured ocean properties. Vine trained naval personnel to use them to escape detection by sonar.
It was the first among many subsequent applications of this research that revolutionized submarine
warfare.¶ Many scientists pursued the marine geophysics research initiated by Ewing. Their work
culminated in the late 1960s in the unifying theory of plate tectonics. It transformed our
understanding of continents, ocean basins, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and a host of other
geological phenomena—including significant oil reservoirs beneath the seafloor—where oil
companies now routinely drill and make money for their shareholders.¶ Al Vine remained in Woods Hole
and spearheaded deep-submergence technology, including the research sub Alvin, which was named after
him. Two years after it was completed, Alvin was applied to a national emergency, locating a hydrogen
bomb that accidentally dropped into the Mediterranean Sea. A decade later, Alvin found seafloor
hydrothermal vents. To humanity’s utter astonishment, the vents were surrounded by
previously unknown organisms sustained not by photosynthesis but
chemosynthesis. This discovery completely changed our conceptions of where and how life can exist
on this planet and elsewhere in the universe.¶ Thirty-five years later, Alvin was again called into action to
help assess and monitor the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its impacts in the Gulf of Mexico, but at the
same time, the ocean science community was able to bring much more to bear in a time of national crisis.
The community’s unparalleled response in the Gulf was enabled by more than three decades of
technological advancements related to development of remotely operated and autonomous underwater
vehicles and new sensors and data assimilation techniques, and integrated networks of sensors, vehicles,
and platforms that have opened the ocean to the light of new study, many of which were developed
through novel partnerships with private funders.¶ Society has benefitted in the past from
public-funded/private-funded partnerships that advance research and
development, probably even before Queen Isabella financed Columbus’s voyage of discovery in 1492.
But I emphasize: It’s a partnership. One doesn’t replace the other. Each augments the other. In an
unexpected bit of poetry, the NSF annual report from 1952 says: ‘‘That which has never been known
cannot be foretold, and herein lies the great promise of basic research. . . . [It] enlarges the realm of the
possible.’’ The bottom line question is: How much are we willing to invest in enlarging the realm of the
possible?¶ Jim Cameron did that with DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. He enlarged the realm of the possible by
demonstrating that even the deepest part of the ocean is not beyond our physical presence. Still other
advances are expanding the possible in many ways through the development and deployment of novel
sensors, autonomous vehicles, and new ways for humans and machines to interact. There is a
revolution in marine technology underway that is positioning us to reach many
unexplored frontiers in the ocean—and the ocean has many. The deep ocean is only one.¶ We
have barely gained access to explore the ocean beneath our polar ice caps— at a time when rapidly
disappearing sea ice has profound implications for Earth’s climate, for ocean ecosystems,
expanded shipping, oil and mineral resource development, and national security.
There is the microbial frontier, where 90 percent of the ocean biomass resides and which is invisible to
the human eye. There are about 300,000 times more microbes in the ocean than there are observable
stars in the universe.5 Ocean scientists have just begun to explore this universe of marine microbes, which
holds the key to healthy biological functioning of the ocean ecosystem, much as the microbiome in the
human body is critical to our health. They are also searching for unknown biochemical pathways and
compounds, for new antibiotics, and for novel treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cystic
fibrosis.¶ Then there is the frontier of temporal and spatial scales that must be overcome to monitor and
forecast changes to the deep and open ocean. The ocean exhibits large, basin-wide patterns of variability
that change over periods ranging from days and weeks to years, decades, and longer. Understanding and
observing these patterns, including El Nin˜ o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), offer potential for improved
prediction of climate variability in the future. For most of my career, I have been an atmospheric scientist.
The atmosphere and ocean are both fluids (one that is compressible, the other incompressible). These two
systems are interwoven and inseparable.¶ But while we have long-established, extensive networks of
meteorological instruments continually monitoring our atmosphere, we have just begun to establish a
relative toehold of long-term observatories to understand, and monitor how the ocean operates. To
truly comprehend Earth’s dynamic behavior and to monitor how it affects us back
on land, scientists must establish a long-term presence in the ocean, including
platforms and suites of physical, chemical, and biological sensors from which to
view how the ocean and seafloor change in fine resolution over seasons, years, and
decades. This same observing capability will provide the basis for improved
forecasts from models that incorporate data and observations from the ocean,
atmosphere, and land and that provide the basis for decision making by national, state,
and local agencies.¶ Variability such as weather events associated with ENSO has significant societal
and economic impacts in the U.S., and a combination of a dedicated ocean-observing system in the
tropical Pacific plus models that forecast ENSO impacts is now in place to help society adapt in times of
increased variability. The promise of additional benefits from observing, understanding, and predicting
the ocean and its impacts is real. Modeled reconstructions by Hoerling and Kumar of the 1930s drought in
the Central U.S. recently linked that event to patterns of anomalies in sea-surface temperature far from
the U.S.6 The global scale of the circulation of the ocean and basin-scale patterns of ocean variability on
decadal and longer time scales may present sources of improved predictive skill in future weather and
climate models. Moving forward, we need to be even more adaptive and agile, applying new technologies
in ways that both make crucial observations more effectively and make coincident observations of the
biology, chemistry, and physics of the ocean. At the same time we need at our modeling and prediction
centers to establish the resources and mindset that will support testing and adoption of research results
that lead to improved predictions.¶ We are on the edge of exploration of many ocean frontiers that will be
using new eyes in the ocean. Public-funded/private-funded investment in those eyes is
required, but will not be successful without adequate and continuing Federal
commitment to ocean science . Support such as Jim’s and the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which was
founded by Eric Schmidt and operates the research vessel Falkor, help fill gaps in support for research
and development or for access to the ocean. However, the fact remains that Federal funding is by
far the leading driver of exploration, observation, and technical research and
development that has a direct impact on the lives of people around the world and
on U.S. economic growth and leadership. It also remains the bellwether by which
philanthropic entrepreneurs judge the long-term viability of the impact their investment will have on the
success that U.S. ocean science research will have around the globe.
Advantage Shells
1AC Biodiversity
Marine biodiversity on the brink of collapse and threatens global extinction
– deadly trio of anthropogenic impacts
Butler 13 (Simon Butler, Austrailian Ecosocialist, is a frequent contributor to Climate & Capitalism, and co-author of Too Many
People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis. “Oceans on the brink of ecological collapse”
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2013/10/14/oceans-brink-ecological-collapse/ Oct 14 2013)
In late September, many mainstream media outlets gave substantial coverage to the UN’s new report on the climate change crisis,
which said the Earth’s climate is warming faster than at any point in the past 65 million years and that human activity is the cause. It
was disappointing, though not surprising, that news reports dried up after only a few days. But another major scientific study,
released a week later and including even graver warnings of a global environmental catastrophe, was mostly ignored altogether.
The marine scientists that released the State of the Ocean 2013 report on October 3
gave the starkest of possible warnings about the impact of carbon pollution on the
oceans: “We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and
exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction
event may have already begun. Developed, industrialised human society is living above the carrying capacity of
the Earth, and the implications for the ocean, and thus for all humans, are huge.” Report co-author, Professor Alex Rogers
of SomervilleCollege, Oxford, said on October 3: “The health of the ocean is spiralling
downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change,
happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated.
The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be
affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth.” The ocean is by far
the Earth’s largest carbon sink and has absorbed most of the excess carbon pollution put into the atmosphere from burning fossil
fuels. The
State of the Ocean 2013 report warned that this is making decisive changes
to the ocean itself, causing a “deadly trio of impacts” – acidification, ocean
warming and deoxygenation (a fall in ocean oxygen levels). The report said: “Most, if not all, of
the Earth’s five past mass extinction events have involved at least one of these three main symptoms of global carbon perturbations
[or disruptions], all of which are present in the ocean today.” Fossil records indicate five mass extinction events have taken place in
the Earth’s history. The biggest of these – the end Permian mass extinction – wiped out as much as 95% of marine life about 250
million years ago. Another, far better known mass extinction event wiped out the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago and is
thought to have been caused by a huge meteor strike. A further big species extinction took place 55 million years ago. Known as the
Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), it was a period of rapid global warming associated with a huge release of greenhouse
gases. “Today’s rate of carbon release,” said the State of the Ocean 2013, “is at least 10 times faster than that which preceded the
[PETM].”[1] Ocean acidification is a sign that the increase in CO2 is surpassing the ocean’s capacity to absorb it. The more acid the
ocean becomes, the bigger threat it poses to marine life – especially sea creatures that form their skeletons or shells from calcium
carbonate such as crustaceans, molluscs, corals and plankton. The
report predicts “extremely serious
consequences for ocean life” if the release of CO2 does not fall, including “the
extinction of some species and decline in biodiversity overall.” Acidification is taking place
fastest at higher latitudes, but overall the report says “geological records indicate that the current acidification is unparalleled in at
least the last 300 million years”. Ocean warming is the second element in the deadly trio. Average ocean temperatures have risen by
0.6°C in the past 100 years. As the ocean gets warmer still, it will help trigger critical climate tipping points that will warm the entire
planet even faster, hurtling it far beyond the climate in which today’s life has evolved. Ocean warming will accelerate the death spiral
of polar sea ice and risks the “increased venting of the greenhouse gas methane from the Arctic seabed”, the report says.
Ongoing ocean warming will also wreak havoc on marine life. The report projects
the “loss of 60% of present biodiversity of exploited marine life and invertebrates,
including numerous local extinctions.” Each decade, fish are expected to migrate
between 30 kilometres to 130 kilometres towards the poles, and live 3.5 metres
deeper underwater, leading to a 40% fall in fish catch potential in tropical regions.
The report says: “All these changes will have massive economic and food security consequences, not least for the fishing industry and
those who depend on it.” The combined effects of acidification and ocean warming will also seal the fate of the world’s coral reefs,
leading to their “terminal and rapid decline” by 2050. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Caribbean Sea reefs will likely “shift from
coral domination to algal domination.” The report says the global target to limit the average temperature rise to 2°C, which was
adopted at the Copenhagen UN climate conference in 2009, “is not sufficient for coral reefs to survive. Lower targets should be
urgently pursued.” Deoxygenation – the third component of the deadly trio – is related to ocean warming and to high levels of
nutrient run-off into the ocean from sewerage and agriculture. The report says overall ocean oxygen levels, which have declined
consistently for the past five decades, could fall by 1% to 7% by 2100. But this figure does not indicate the big rise in the number of
low oxygen “dead zones,” which has doubled every decade since the 1960s. Whereas acidification most impacts upon smaller marine
life, deoxygenation hits larger animals, such as Marlin and Tuna, hardest. The
report cautions that the
combined impact of this deadly trio will “have cascading consequences for marine
biology, including altered food webs dynamics and the expansion of pathogens
[causing disease].” It also warns that it adds to other big problems affecting the ocean, such as chemical pollution and
overfishing (up to 70% of the world’s fish stock is overfished). “We may already have entered into an
extinction period and not yet realised it. What is certain is that the current carbon
perturbations will have huge implications for humans, and may well be the most
important challenge faced since the hominids evolved. The urgent need to reduce the pressure of all
ocean stressors, especially CO2 emissions, is well signposted.” [1] The pace at which carbon was released during the PETM is under
scientific dispute. Until recently, most geologists assumed the process took many thousands of years. But an October 6 paper
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Rutgers University geologists Morgan Schaller and James
Wright said the carbon release took place very rapidly, causing the oceans to turn acidic and average temperatures to rise by 5°C in
just 13 years.
US ocean exploration key to reversing destructive trend of previous
exploitation – discoveries in sustainable energy, conservation practices,
and the overall value of the ocean result from it
Cousteau (special correspondent for CNN, co-founder EarthEcho International)March 13th, 2012
(Philippe,“Why exploring the ocean is mankind's next giant leap”, Light Years,
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/13/why-exploring-the-ocean-is-mankinds-next-giant-leap/)
We now have a golden opportunity and a pressing need to recapture that pioneering spirit. A
new era of ocean
exploration can yield discoveries that will help inform everything from critical
medical advances to sustainable forms of energy. Consider that AZT, an early treatment for HIV,
is derived from a Caribbean reef sponge, or that a great deal of energy - from offshore wind, to OTEC (ocean thermal
energy conservation), to wind and wave energy - is yet untapped in our oceans. Like unopened presents under the
tree, the ocean is a treasure trove of knowledge. In addition, such discoveries will have a tremendous impact on
economic growth by creating jobs as well as technologies and goods. In addition to new discoveries, we
also have the opportunity to course correct when it comes to stewardship of our
oceans. Research and exploration can go hand in glove with resource management
and conservation. Over the last several decades, as the United States has been
exploring space, we’ve exploited and polluted our oceans at an alarming rate
without dedicating the needed time or resources to truly understand the critical
role they play in the future of the planet. It is not trite to say that the oceans are the
life support system of this planet, providing us with up to 70 percent of our oxygen,
as well as a primary source of protein for billions of people, not to mention the
regulation of our climate. Despite this life-giving role, the world has fished, mined
and trafficked the ocean's resources to a point where we are actually seeing
dramatic changes that is seriously impacting today's generations. And that impact will
continue as the world's population approaches 7 billion people, adding strain to the world’s resources unlike any
humanity has ever had to face before. In the long term, destroying our ocean resources is bad business with
devastating consequences for the global economy, and the health and sustainability of all creatures - including
humans. Marine spatial planning, marine sanctuaries, species conservation, sustainable fishing strategies,
and more must be a part of any ocean exploration and conservation program to provide hope of restoring
health to our oceans. While there is still much to learn and discover through space
exploration, we also need to pay attention to our unexplored world here on earth.
Our next big leap into the unknown can be every bit as exciting and bold as our
pioneering work in space. It possesses the same "wow" factor: alien worlds,
dazzling technological feats and the mystery of the unknown. The United States
has the scientific muscle, the diplomatic know-how and the entrepreneurial spirit
to lead the world in exploring and protecting our ocean frontier.
Discoveries from increased ocean exploration key to address biodiversity
collapse – prerequisite to informed policy decisions
Wheeler 12 (Quentin Wheeler, Senior Sustainability Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of
Sustainability and Professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, 3/27/2012,
“Mapping the biosphere: exploring species to understand the origin, organization and sustainability of
biodiversity”, Systematics and Biodiversity journal, pdf || Alice)
Dynamic, constantly evolving and awesome in complexity, Earth's biosphere has proven to be a
vast frontier that, even after centuries of exploration, remains largely uncharted.
Its intricate webs of interacting organisms have created resilient sources of ecological services. In its
diversity of species and their attributes are told the story of the origin and evolutionary history of life,
reflecting billions of ways in which organisms have adapted, again and again, to a constantly changing
planet. So beautiful, its flora and fauna have inspired poems, songs and great works of art. So creative,
natural selection has successfully solved, many times over, challenges analogous to those facing human
society today. In knowledge of biodiversity lie both clues to our past and our best hopes for the future.
Exploring the biosphere is much like exploring the Universe. The more we learn,
the more complex and surprising the biosphere and its story turn out to be. We
have made, and are making, spectacularly impressive progress. Nearly 2 000 000
species are known and another 18 000 new plants and animals are discovered each year (Chapman, 2009;
IISE, 2012). The number of eukaryotic species was recently calculated to be 8.7
million, suggesting that 87% remain undiscovered and undescribed (Mora et al., 2011).
This number is close to the 10 million consensus estimate reported by Chapman (2009). Assuming
that these numbers are close to the actual number, and recognizing that the
challenge includes both description of new species and redescription of existing
species, the magnitude of the challenge is in the range of 10.7 to 12 million species
treatments. Recognizing that there are mitigating factors (e.g. some species descriptions are in
relatively good shape; many undescribed species are already present in collections), we have used the
round number of 10 million as a goal for initial planning purposes. In any case, the number of species will
remain controversial until we have gained significantly more knowledge. Molecular sequencing is
revealing unsuspected microbial diversity and adding critically important data for both species
identifications and phylogenetic reconstructions. Ecologists continue to reveal the function of
dynamic and massively complex living networks. The accumulated knowledge of
biodiversity, more than 250 years of published literature and field observations, associated with
several billion specimens in herbaria and natural history museums around the globe, is becoming
accessible and analysable in digital form, enabling questions new in kind and scale
about the ecology, biogeography and evolution of life. By adapting existing
technologies and organizing a transdisciplinary workforce, we have the
opportunity to make much faster progress exploring species and, in turn, enable
society to make better-informed decisions about the environment. For the first
time in human history, the rate of species extinction may exceed that of species
discovery (Wilson, 1992; Raven, 1997) and foretell a mass extinction event (He & Hubbell, 2011 ). The
consequences of losing so much biodiversity are neither known nor knowable
without significantly greater understanding of the biosphere's structure, status
and function. We stand to lose things of both great intrinsic and instrumental
value (Vane-Wright, 2009). Increased knowledge of what species exist and where they
live would prepare us to detect, monitor, measure and predict increases or
decreases in biological diversity as well as the impacts of these changes on the
functions of ecosystems. Beyond direct environmental benefits, an inventory of
species taps a wellspring of living diversity from which we may seek new
materials, processes, designs, inspirations and ideas to confront environmental,
medical and engineering challenges in a rapidly changing world. Nature has had the
benefit of billions of years of countless trial-and-error experiments to find creative and sustainable
solutions to survival challenges. For the most serious issues facing humanity, we do not
have the luxury of a nearly indefinite period of time to stumble upon effective
solutions. The next best thing is to emulate the creativity of the natural world (e.g.
Benyus, 1998), even when model does not map directly to solution (Reed et al., 2009 ). Technological
advances mean that it is now possible to envision an exploration of Earth's species
on an unprecedented scale and tempo (Wheeler, 2010). The benefits of knowing our
planet's species are innumerable. We can learn what species exist and in what
combinations, so that we are prepared to detect responses to environmental
change and introductions of invasive species. We can analyse and understand the
function of ecosystems, and delivery of ecological services, at a level of detail never
before possible. And we can gather comprehensive evidence of phylogeny.
1AC Climate Change
<Climate Change is real/anthro and its really bad>
Increased oceanic data collection is the first step to respond to climate
change
McNutt 13 (Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science, 8/30/2013, “Accelerating Ocean Exploration”,
Science journal, pdf || Alice)
Last month, a distinguished group of ocean researchers and explorers convened in Long Beach,
California, at the Aquarium of the Pacific to assess progress and future prospects in ocean exploration.
Thirteen years ago, U.S. President Clinton challenged a similar group to provide a blueprint for ocean
exploration and discovery. Since then, the fundamental rationale has not changed: to
collect high-quality data on the physics, chemistry, biology, and geology of the
oceans that can be used to answer known questions as well as those we do not yet
know enough to pose, to develop new instruments and systems to explore the
ocean in new dimensions, and to engage a new generation of youth in science and
technology. Recently, however, exploration has taken on a more urgent imperative: to
record the substantial changes occurring in largely undocumented regions of the
ocean. With half of the ocean more than 10 kilometers from the nearest depth
sounding, ecosystem function in the deep sea still a mystery, and no first-order
baseline for many globally important ocean processes, the current pace of
exploration is woefully inadequate to address this daunting task, especially as the
planet responds to changes in climate. To meet this challenge, future ocean exploration must
depart dramatically from the classical ship-based expeditions of the past devoted to mapping and
sampling. As a first step, future exploration should make better use of autonomous
platforms that are equipped with a broader array of in situ sensors, for lower-cost
data gathering. Fortunately, new, more nimble, and easily deployed platforms are available, ranging
from $200 kits for build-your-own remotely operated vehicles to long-range autonomous underwater
vehicles (AUVs), solar-powered autonomous platforms, autonomous boats, AUVs that operate
cooperatively in swarming behavior through the use of artificial intelligence, and gliders that can cross
entire oceans. New in situ chemical and biological sensors allow the probing of ocean
processes in real time in ways not possible if samples are processed later in
laboratories. Exploration also would greatly benefit from improvements in
telepresence. For expeditions that require ships (very distant from shore and requiring the return of
complex samples), experts on shore can now “join” through satellite links, enlarging the pool of
talent available to comment on the importance of discoveries as they happen and
to participate in real-time decisions that affect expedition planning. This type of
communication can enrich the critical human interactions that guide the discovery
process on such expeditions.
1AC Science Diplomacy
Current ocean exploration is insufficient – science diplomacy has potential
to be effective but requires reinvigoration
Tjossem 5 [Sara, Senior Lecturer @ SIPAMaster of Public Administration, “PICES: Scientific
Cooperation in the North Pacific”, http://aquaticcommons.org/169/1/akub05002.pdf, accessed 7/16/14,
AR]
Traders, explorers, cartographers, and scientists have shaped our understanding of
oceans as vital to the development of coastal states’ security, commerce, and prestige.
Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, merchant sailing vessels started a systematic effort to
exchange observations on the state of the seas on their trade routes. Not until the late nineteenth century,
however, did marine science begin to reveal the ocean’s extraordinary complexity. Extensive seagoing
expeditions like those of the HMS Challenger of the mid 1870s revealed ever-greater economic and
scientific riches from coasts to depths.’ Although these expeditions required tremendous
coordinating and marshalling of people and resources to carry out research at sea,
the rewards of ocean exploration seemed well worth the costs. By the early twentieth
century a growing number of scientists argued that a robust marine science was essential for
the rational exploitation of the ocean and its resources. The ocean was both a source of
valuable harvestable resources and a path to loftier goals of international exchange and
cooperation. Ideally marine science could foster new understanding among nations
and reduce world tensions through its international reach. Marine systems challenge
scientific study with their vastness, and their complex processes that operate over equally extensive
temporal dimensions. Exploring their processes is extremely expensive in ship time and researcher effort,
encouraging careful planning for greatest cost-effectiveness. Marine expeditions require tightly
coordinated teams of researchers working in cramped quarters on expensive research
vessels in unpredictable, often poor, weather conditions. Because controlled experiments are difficult and
some times impractical or impossible, marine scientists must at times interpret their observations by
relying on natural experiments. For example, because winds cannot be turned on or off at will, studying
the nature of coastal current upwelling requires a natural experiment comparing different coasts around
the world. Such an undertaking requires cooperative efforts drawing on scores of
field observations, which in turn depend on measurements of comparable quality and technique.
Methodology and scientific approaches, however, can differ among fields, institutions, and nations.
Producing a plausible explanation for large oceanic processes requires synthesis across these realms.
Marine science is particularly dependent on effective cooperation among
scientists, laboratories, disciplines, institutions, and governments. Although marine
scientists have a long tradition of collaboration, it is generally through informal,
temporary arrangements for particular projects. These ad hoc ventures by their nature lack
continuity as researchers gather together for specific projects and disperse at their
end. Scientists working on international projects also face scientific, political, and cultural challenges.
Although science has been called a universal language, transcending the limitations of different languages
and uniting scientists in a common cause, collaborative research reveals significant variety in scientific
goals, styles, and techniques.2 One account of oceanography during the Cold War era has questioned
whether, given disparate styles of scientific inquiry and the desire for national prestige, there could ever
be a truly international, univer sal scientific community. It suggests the rhetoric of universalism and inter
nationalism has been an ideal pursued only from a position of strength.
US initiative in ocean exploration incentivizes other nations to advance
efforts – bolsters science diplomacy
Kearny 3, [William, Director of Media Relations, “Major Ocean Exploration Effort Would Reveal Secrets
of the Deep,” 11/4, http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10844,
accessed 7/16/14, AR]
WASHINGTON -- A new large-scale, multidisciplinary ocean exploration program
would increase the pace of discovery of new species, ecosystems, energy sources,
seafloor features, pharmaceutical products, and artifacts, as well as improve
understanding of the role oceans play in climate change, says a new congressionally
mandated report from the National Academies' National Research Council. Such a program should be run
by a nonfederal organization and should encourage international participation, added the committee that
wrote the report. Congress, interested in the possibility of an international ocean exploration program,
asked the Research Council to examine the feasibility of such an effort. The committee concluded,
however, that given the limited resources in many other countries, it would be
prudent to begin with a U.S. program that would include foreign representatives
and serve as a model for other countries. Once programs are established
elsewhere, groups of nations could then collaborate on research and pool their
resources under international agreements. "The United States should lead by
example," said committee chair John Orcutt, professor of geophysics and deputy director, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. Vast portions of the ocean remain
unexplored. In fact, while a dozen men have walked on the moon, just two have traveled to the farthest
reaches of the ocean, and only for about 30 minutes each time, the report notes. "The bottom of the ocean
is the Earth's least explored frontier, and currently available submersibles -- whether manned, remotely
operated, or autonomous -- cannot reach the deepest parts of the sea," said committee vice chair Shirley
A. Pomponi, vice president and director of research at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Fort
Pierce, Fla. Nonetheless, recent discoveries of previously unknown species and deep-sea biological and
chemical processes have heightened interest in ocean exploration. For example, researchers working off
the coast of California revealed how some organisms consume methane seeping through the sea floor,
converting it to energy for themselves and leaving hydrogen and carbon dioxide as byproducts. The
hydrogen could perhaps someday be harnessed for fuel cells, leaving the carbon dioxide – which
contributes to global warming in the atmosphere – in the sea. Likewise, a recent one-month expedition off
Australia and New Zealand that explored deep-sea volcanic mountains and abyssal plains collected 100
previously unidentified fish species and up to 300 new species of invertebrates. Most current U.S.
funding for ocean research, however, goes to projects that plan to revisit earlier
sites or for improving understanding of known processes, rather than to support
truly exploratory oceanography, the report says. And because the funding bureaucracy
is discipline-based, grants are usually allocated to chemists, biologists, or physical
scientists, rather than to teams of researchers representing a variety of scientific
fields. A coordinated, international ocean exploration effort is not unprecedented,
however; in fact, the International Decade of Ocean Exploration in the 1970s was
considered a great success.
Science diplomacy solves a laundry list of impacts
Federoff 8 [Nina, Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State,
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg41470/html/CHRG-110hhrg41470.htm]
Chairman Baird, Ranking Member Ehlers, and distinguished members of the Subcommittee,
thank you for this opportunity to discuss science diplomacy at the U.S. Department of State.
The U.S. is recognized globally for its leadership in science and technology. Our
scientific strength is both a tool of ``soft power''--part of our strategic diplomatic
arsenal--and a basis for creating partnerships with countries as they move beyond
basic economic and social development. Science diplomacy is a central element of the
Secretary's transformational diplomacy initiative, because science and technology are
essential to achieving stability and strengthening failed and fragile states. S&T
advances have immediate and enormous influence on national and global
economies, and thus on the international relations between societies. Nation states,
nongovernmental organizations, and multinational corporations are largely shaped by their
expertise in and access to intellectual and physical capital in science, technology, and
engineering. Even as S&T advances of our modern era provide opportunities for economic
prosperity, some also challenge the relative position of countries in the world order, and
influence our social institutions and principles. America must remain at the forefront of
this new world by maintaining its technological edge, and leading the way
internationally through science diplomacy and engagement. The Public Diplomacy
Role of Science Science by its nature facilitates diplomacy because it strengthens political
relationships, embodies powerful ideals, and creates opportunities for all. The global
scientific community embraces principles Americans cherish: transparency,
meritocracy, accountability, the objective evaluation of evidence, and broad and frequently
democratic participation. Science is inherently democratic, respecting evidence and
truth above all. Science is also a common global language, able to bridge deep political and
religious divides. Scientists share a common language. Scientific interactions serve to keep
open lines of communication and cultural understanding. As scientists everywhere have
a common evidentiary external reference system, members of ideologically
divergent societies can use the common language of science to cooperatively address
both domestic and the increasingly trans-national and global problems confronting
humanity in the 21st century. There is a growing recognition that science and technology
will increasingly drive the successful economies of the 21st century. Science and
technology provide an immeasurable benefit to the U.S. by bringing scientists and students
here, especially from developing countries, where they see democracy in action, make friends
in the international scientific community, become familiar with American technology, and
contribute to the U.S. and global economy. For example, in 2005, over 50 percent of
physical science and engineering graduate students and postdoctoral researchers trained in
the U.S. have been foreign nationals. Moreover, many foreign-born scientists who were
educated and have worked in the U.S. eventually progress in their careers to hold influential
positions in ministries and institutions both in this country and in their home countries.
They also contribute to U.S. scientific and technologic development: According to the
National Science Board's 2008 Science and Engineering Indicators, 47 percent of full-time
doctoral science and engineering faculty in U.S. research institutions were foreign-born.
Finally, some types of science--particularly those that address the grand challenges in
science and technology--are inherently international in scope and collaborative by necessity.
The ITER Project, an international fusion research and development collaboration, is a
product of the thaw in superpower relations between Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
and U.S. President Ronald Reagan. This reactor will harness the power of nuclear fusion as a
possible new and viable energy source by bringing a star to Earth. ITER serves as a symbol
of international scientific cooperation among key scientific leaders in the developed and
developing world--Japan, Korea, China, E.U., India, Russia, and United States--representing
70 percent of the world's current population. The recent elimination of funding for FY08
U.S. contributions to the ITER project comes at an inopportune time as the Agreement on
the Establishment of the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization for the Joint
Implementation of the ITER Project had entered into force only on October 2007. The
elimination of the promised U.S. contribution drew our allies to question our
commitment and credibility in international cooperative ventures. More
problematically, it jeopardizes a platform for reaffirming U.S. relations with key
states. It should be noted that even at the height of the cold war, the United States used
science diplomacy as a means to maintain communications and avoid
misunderstanding between the world's two nuclear powers--the Soviet Union and the
United States. In a complex multi-polar world, relations are more challenging,
the threats perhaps greater, and the need for engagement more paramount.
Using Science Diplomacy to Achieve National Security Objectives The welfare and
stability of countries and regions in many parts of the globe require a concerted
effort by the developed world to address the causal factors that render countries
fragile and cause states to fail. Countries that are unable to defend their people against
starvation, or fail to provide economic opportunity, are susceptible to extremist ideologies,
autocratic rule, and abuses of human rights. As well, the world faces common threats,
among them climate change, energy and water shortages, public health
emergencies, environmental degradation, poverty, food insecurity, and
religious extremism. These threats can undermine the national security of the
United States, both directly and indirectly. Many are blind to political boundaries,
becoming regional or global threats. The United States has no monopoly on knowledge in a
globalizing world and the scientific challenges facing humankind are enormous.
Addressing these common challenges demands common solutions and
necessitates scientific cooperation, common standards, and common goals. We must
increasingly harness the power of American ingenuity in science and technology through
strong partnerships with the science community in both academia and the private sector, in
the U.S. and abroad among our allies, to advance U.S. interests in foreign policy.
1AC STEM - Competitiveness
The United States is behind in STEM education in the status quo – ocean
exploration is a crucial stepping-stone to key to revitalizing career interest
Beattie and Schubel 13 [Ted, President of Shedd Aquarium, Jerry, “The Report of Ocean
Exploration 2020: A National Forum”, 7/19-21,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf, accessed 7/16/13, AR]
In the current competitive global economy, the United States faces a distinct
disadvantage. Only 16 percent of American high school seniors are proficient in
mathematics and interested in STEM careers. And among those who do pursue college degrees in
STEM fields, only half choose to work in a STEM-related career. The benefits of STEM
education are clear. By 2018, the U.S. anticipates more than 1.2 million job openings in STEM-related
occupations, including fields as diverse as science, medicine, software development, and engineering.
STEM workers, on average, earn 26 percent more than their non-STEM counterparts, and experience
lower unemployment rates than those in other fields. In addition, healthy STEM industries are critical to
maintaining a quality of life in the United States. A national program of ocean and Great Lakes
exploration provides myriad ways to capture public imagination and curiosity to
support sustained involvement and more intense exposure not only to STEM topics,
but also the humanities and arts. New less expensive tools, such as small ROVs, remote
sensing stations, and underwater cameras, enable everyone to participate in ocean
and freshwater exploration as citizen scientists. These types of public engagements
around exploration, such as through the NOAA kiosks stationed in Coastal Ecosystem Learning
Centers, provide a glimpse into the true nature of science: not merely as a bundle of
textbook facts, but a dynamic enterprise of investigation that is constantly changing as our
understanding evolves. The effectiveness of STEM-focused programs are evident; studies have
shown not only that young people enjoy inquiry-based STEM activities in and out of
school settings, but also that sustained involvement and more intense exposure to
STEM topics increase youth interest and confidence in their scientific abilities. By
engaging the public with ocean and Great Lakes observation, we provide people of all ages with
opportunities to explore their natural aquatic environments, and to fall in love with the magic and
mystery of scientific exploration.
New exploration funding is key to inspiring STEM education
Bidwell 13 (Allie, US News, 9/25/13, “Scientists Release First Plan for National Ocean Exploration
Program,” http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/09/25/scientists-release-first-plan-for-nationalocean-exploration-program, accessed 7/15, AR]
More than three-quarters of what lies beneath the surface of the ocean is
unknown, even to trained scientists and researchers. Taking steps toward discovering what
resources and information the seas hold, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and the Aquarium of the Pacific released on Wednesday a report that details plans to
create the nation's first ocean exploration program by the year 2020. The report stems from a national
convening of more than 100 federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations, nonprofit organizations
and private companies to discuss what components should make up a national ocean exploration program
and what will be needed to create it. "This is the first time the explorers themselves came together and
said, 'this is the kind of program we want and this is what it's going to take,'" says Jerry Schubel, president
and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific, located in Long Beach, Calif. "That's very important,
particularly when you put it in the context that the world ocean is the largest single
component of Earth's living infrastructure ... and less than 10 percent of it has ever
been explored." In order to create a comprehensive exploration program, Schubel says it will become
increasingly important that federal and state agencies form partnerships with other organizations, as it
is unlikely that government funding for ocean exploration will increase in the next
few years. Additionally, Schubel says there was a consensus among those explorers and stakeholders
who gathered in July that participating organizations need to take advantage of
technologies that are available and place a greater emphasis on public engagement
and citizen exploration – utilizing the data that naturalists and nonscientists collect on their own.
"In coastal areas at least, given some of these new low-cost robots that are available, they could actually
produce data that would help us understand the nation's coastal environment," Schubel says.
Expanding the nation's ocean exploration program could lead to more jobs, he
adds, and could also serve as an opportunity to engage children and adults in
careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. "I think
what we need to do as a nation is make STEM fields be seen by young people as
exciting career trajectories," Schubel says. "We need to reestablish the excitement of
science and engineering, and I think ocean exploration gives us a way to do that."
Schubel says science centers, museums and aquariums can serve as training grounds to give children and
adults the opportunity to learn more about the ocean and what opportunities exist in STEM fields. "One
thing that we can contribute more than anything else is to let kids and families come to our institutions
and play, explore, make mistakes, and ask silly questions without being burdened down by the kinds of
standards that our formal K-12 and K-14 schools have to live up to," Schubel says. Conducting more data
collection and exploration quests is also beneficial from an economic standpoint because explorers have
the potential to identify new resources, both renewable and nonrenewable. Having access to those
materials, such as oils and minerals, and being less dependent on other nations, Schubel says, could help
improve national security. Each time explorers embark on a mission to a new part of the ocean, they bring
back more detailed information by mapping the sea floor and providing high-resolution images of what
exists, says David McKinnie, a senior advisor for NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and a
co-author of the report. On almost every expedition, he says, the scientists discover new species. In a trip
to Indonesia in 2010, for example, McKinnie says researchers discovered more than 50 new species of
coral. "It's really a reflection of how unknown the ocean is," McKinnie says. "Every time we go to a new
place, we find something new, and something new about the ocean that's important." And these
expeditions can have important impacts not just for biological cataloging, but also for the environment,
McKinnie says. In a 2004 expedition in the Pacific Ocean, NOAA scientists identified a group of
underwater volcanoes that were "tremendous" sources of carbon dioxide, and thus contributed to
increasing ocean acidification, McKinnie says. Research has shown that when ocean waters become more
acidic from absorbing carbon dioxide, they produce less of a gas that protects the Earth from the sun's
radiation and can amplify global warming. But until NOAA's expedition, no measures accounted for
carbon dioxide produced from underwater volcanoes. "It's not just bringing back pretty pictures,"
McKinnie says. "It's getting real results that matter."
STEM is a controlling factor in economic leadership – it drives
innovation to compete on the global market
Huggins 11 [Michael, Air force research laboratory, “Air Force Research Laboratory Investments in
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education” 11/28, Astropolitics, Volume 9, pg. 93–212,
accessed 7/15, AR]
Innovation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) has served as the cornerstone of
the rise to global leadership for the United States. Such innovation will be essential if the
nation hopes to maintain its technological and competitive edge in an increasingly
competitive global economy. The ability to maintain that edge is at risk, however. There is great
concern about the diminishing production of U.S. citizen STEM graduates. Recent trends show that the
educational system in the United States is failing to produce graduating seniors who are academically
equipped to pursue degrees in STEM fields.1 This dearth of science and technology literacy in the
young professional workforce will diminish the country’s ability to create new products
and generate high-value jobs. The National STEM Education Caucus agrees, reasoning that the
‘‘foundation of innovation lies in a dynamic, motivated, and well-educated work force
equipped with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills.’’2 Others fear that U.S.
national security will be placed at risk if student interest in STEM subject areas continues to dwindle. The
United States Commission on the National Security in the Twenty-First Century has summed up this fear
as follows: The harsh fact is that the U.S. need for the highest quality capital in science,
mathematics and engineering is not being met . . . Second only to a weapon of mass destruction
detonating in an American city, we can think of nothing more dangerous than a failure to manage
properly science, technology and education for the common good over the next century.3
Economic competitiveness is the vital internal link to effective US
influence
Hubbard 10 [Jessy, Program Assistant at Open Society Foundations, “Hegemonic Stability Theory: An
Empirical Analysis”, National Defense University, University of Oxford, 2010, accessed 7/16/14, AR]
Regression analysis of this data shows that Pearson’s r-value is -.836. In the case of
American hegemony, economic strength is a better predictor of violent conflict
than even overall national power, which had an r-value of -.819. The data is also well within the
realm of statistical significance, with a p-value of .0014. While the data for British hegemony was not as
striking, the same overall pattern holds true in both cases. During both periods of hegemony, hegemonic
strength was negatively related with violent conflict, and yet use of force by the hegemon was positively
correlated with violent conflict in both cases. Finally, in both cases, economic power was more
closely associated with conflict levels than military power. Statistical analysis created a
more complicated picture of the hegemon’s role in fostering stability than initially
anticipated. VI. Conclusions and Implications for Theory and Policy To elucidate some answers
regarding the complexities my analysis unearthed, I turned first to the existing theoretical literature on
hegemonic stability theory. The existing literature provides some potential frameworks for understanding
these results. Since economic strength proved to be of such crucial importance, reexamining the literature
that focuses on hegemonic stability theory’s economic implications was the logical first step. As explained
above, the literature on hegemonic stability theory can be broadly divided into two camps – that which
focuses on the international economic system, and that which focuses on armed conflict and instability.
This research falls squarely into the second camp, but insights from the first camp are still of relevance.
Even Kindleberger’s early work on this question is of relevance. Kindleberger posited that the economic
instability between the First and Second World Wars could be attributed to the lack of an
economic hegemon (Kindleberger 1973). But economic instability obviously has spillover effects into
the international political arena. Keynes, writing after WWI, warned in his seminal tract The Economic
Consequences of the Peace that Germany’s economic humiliation could have a radicalizing effect on the
nation’s political culture (Keynes 1919). Given later events, his warning seems prescient. In the years since
the Second World War, however, the European continent has not relapsed into armed conflict. What was
different after the second global conflagration? Crucially, the United States was in a far more powerful
position than Britain was after WWI. As the tables above show, Britain’s economic strength after the First
World War was about 13% of the total in strength in the international system. In contrast, the United
States possessed about 53% of relative economic power in the international system in the years
immediately following WWII. The U.S. helped rebuild Europe’s economic strength with billions of dollars
in investment through the Marshall Plan, assistance that was never available to the defeated powers after
the First World War (Kindleberger 1973). The interwar years were also marked by a series of debilitating
trade wars that likely worsened the Great Depression (Ibid.). In contrast, when Britain was more
powerful, it was able to facilitate greater free trade, and after World War II, the United States played a
leading role in creating institutions like the GATT that had an essential role in facilitating global trade
(Organski 1958). The possibility that economic stability is an important factor in the overall security
environment should not be discounted, especially given the results of my statistical analysis. Another
theory that could provide insight into the patterns observed in this research is that of preponderance of
power. Gilpin theorized that when a state has the preponderance of power in the international
system, rivals are more likely to resolve their disagreements without resorting to armed
conflict (Gilpin 1983). The logic behind this claim is simple – it makes more sense to
challenge a weaker hegemon than a stronger one. This simple yet powerful theory can help
explain the puzzlingly strong positive correlation between military conflicts engaged in by
the hegemon and conflict overall. It is not necessarily that military involvement by the hegemon
instigates further conflict in the international system. Rather, this military involvement could be a
function of the hegemon’s weaker position, which is the true cause of the higher levels of
conflict in the international system. Additionally, it is important to note that military power
is, in the long run, dependent on economic strength . Thus, it is possible that as hegemons
lose relative economic power, other nations are tempted to challenge them even if their short-
term military capabilities are still strong . This would help explain some of the variation found
between the economic and military data. The results of this analysis are of clear importance beyond the
realm of theory. As the debate rages over the role of the United States in the world, hegemonic stability
theory has some useful insights to bring to the table. What this research makes clear is that a strong
hegemon can exert a positive influence on stability in the international system. However,
this should not give policymakers a justification to engage in conflict or escalate military
budgets purely for the sake of international stability. If anything, this research points to
the central importance of economic influence in fostering international stability. To
misconstrue these findings to justify anything else would be a grave error indeed.
Hegemons may play a stabilizing role in the international system, but this role is
complicated. It is economic strength, not military dominance that is the true test of
hegemony. A weak state with a strong military is a paper tiger – it may appear
fearsome, but it is vulnerable to even a short blast of wind.
US influence prevents great power war, economic collapse, and global
governance failures
Thayer 13 [PhD U Chicago, former research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center,
political science professor at Baylor (Bradley, professor in the political science department at Baylor
University, “Humans, Not Angels: Reasons to Doubt the Decline of War Thesis”, International Studies
Review Volume 15, Issue 3, pages 396–419, September 2013]
Accordingly, while Pinker is sensitive to the importance of power in a domestic context—the Leviathan
is good for safety and the decline of violence—he neglects the role of power in the
international context, specifically he neglects US power as a force for stability. So, if
a liberal Leviathan is good for domestic politics, a liberal Leviathan should be as well for international
politics. The primacy of the United States provides the world with that liberal Leviathan and has four
major positive consequences for international politics (Thayer 2006). In addition to ensuring the security
of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system
causes many positive outcomes for the world. The first has been a more peaceful
world. During the Cold War, US leadership reduced friction among many states that
were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today,
American primacy and the security blanket it provides reduce nuclear
proliferation incentives and help keep a number of complicated relationships
stable such as between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan,
India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. Wars still occur where Washington's
interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's
likelihood—particularly the worst form—great power wars. Second, American power
gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and many of the other
positive forces Pinker identifies. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned
as well as the United States because liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States
and be sympathetic to the American worldview. In addition, once states are governed
democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This
is not because democracies do not have clashing interests. Rather, it is because
they are more transparent, more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with US
leadership. Third, along with the growth of the number of democratic states around the world
has been the growth of the global economy. With its allies, the United States has
labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free
trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, mobility of capital,
and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this
economic order is a global public good. Fourth, and finally, the United States has been willing
to use its power not only to advance its interests but to also promote the welfare of people all over the
globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the
world. The US military has participated in over 50 operations since the end of the Cold War—and most
of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the US military is the earth's “911 force”—it
serves, de facto, as the world's police, the global paramedic, and the planet's fire department. There is
no other state, group of states, or international organizations that can provide
these global benefits. Without US power, the liberal order created by the United
States will end just as assuredly. But, the waning of US power, at least in relative terms,
introduces additional problems for Pinker concerning the decline of violence in the international realm.
Given the importance of the distribution of power in international politics, and specifically US
power for stability, there is reason to be concerned about the future as the
distribution of relative power changes and not to the benefit of the United States.
Advantages: More Ev
Biodiversity
Brink/Impact
Ocean biodiversity collapsing now
Anderson(Journalist)June 25th, 2014(Dawn, “World oceans on brink of collapse, report warns”, The State
Column, http://www.statecolumn.com/2014/06/world-oceans-on-brink-of-collapse-report-warns/)
The
Global Ocean Commission on Tuesday released a report forecasting a stark
future for the world’s population. The report states that regional stability, climate resilience, and food
security are at risk if world governments fail to take immediate action to curb “habitat
destruction, biodiversity loss, overfishing, pollution, climate change and ocean
acidification” that are “pushing the ocean system to the point of collapse.” The
GOC, comprised of leading business persons and former prominent political
figures, has just completed an 18 month investigation into the effects of humanity
on the high seas, the 65% of global waters that lie outside the jurisdiction of any national government.
Included in the report is a five-year “rescue package”, which the GOC admits may be painful in the short term, but is
necessary for long term survival. Besides meeting with current political leaders during the course of the investigation,
the GOC conferred with a diverse group of scientists, economists, business leaders, ocean users, and trade unions.
Biodiversity collapsing now- threatens human existence
Wolf(Climate science director, Center for Biological Diversity)4/17/2014(Shaye, “Reports Reveal
Terrifying Climate Threat to Biodiversity”, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shayewolf/reports-reveal-terrifying_b_5169815.html)
The IPCC reports released over the past several weeks confirm that a large
percentage of the world's species face an increased extinction risk unless we take
bold action to reduce carbon pollution. And President Obama and other world leaders must shift very quickly to
cleaner energy sources, the panel's experts say, because emissions of planet-warming pollutants have risen so sharply
over the last decade. Changes like rising seas, hotter temperatures, and deepening
droughts are already making life increasingly difficult for many plants and
animals -- and, in many cases, threatening to push them off the planet. Here in
California, the San Bernardino flying squirrel -- which uses wingsuit-like flaps of skin to glide from tree to tree -- has
found its forest habitat moving upslope as temperatures warm. Like many mountain-dwelling creatures, this amazing
escape artist may soon have no place left to run. Walrus mothers and babies in Alaska can no longer find sea ice they
need for resting, and are forced into dangerous locations. Florida's tiny Key deer is seeing its island home being
swallowed by rising seas. What price will we pay for declining biodiversity? Some harms to
human societies are obvious. The IPCC's experts say climate disruption threatens fisheries in the United
States and many other parts of the world. Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest, for example, may decline as much
as 50 percent in the coming decades. Some crop yields have already been hurt by climate change. If warming
continues unchecked, many countries will face growing food insecurity, according to the report. And rising
temperatures and ocean acidification caused by carbon pollution are already harming coral reefs and their remarkable
diversity of life, which threatens tourism. But there's something more fundamental at stake --
something you can't put a price on. We're locking ourselves into a future in which
a terrifying loss of biodiversity will fundamentally transform the Earth. We risk
leaving our children a lonelier planet -- a world where many animals and plants
are just a memory. The IPCC report's most important message, that we can avoid
many climate dangers if we make ambitious cuts to carbon pollution, is a strong
call to action. The bolder and quicker the cuts, the better the future for all life on
this planet, including humans.
Biodiversity loss threatens all life on earth
Rivers (writer for the Helium Network)September 19th, 2012(Christyl, “Loss of Biodiversity Means Loss of Human
Life”, Sciences 360, http://www.sciences360.com/index.php/loss-of-biodiversity-means-loss-of-human-life-2409/)
The loss of biodiversity means the loss of all life supported by inter-connected
dynamics which supply air, water and nutrients. Biodiversity is in effect, everything evolved on
earth that is not mere mineral or inanimate chemical. In school, many students have learned about
the food chain, or even the great chain of being. The chain theory, however, is
obsolete and has been replaced by the new comprehension that all life
complements other life. Life exists in a web of interconnected bits. It is not just the
survival of fittest, but the interaction of everything that lives and dies which
creates the carbon cycle, the hydrology cycle, the replenishment of the soil and the
restoration, daily and ongoing, of the water and air that support life upon earth.
Without insects, pollinators, and seed depositors, there is no way to propagate or continue sustainable populations of
plants and animals, no less human beings. For example, cattle when fed on grasslands do not rely upon the
monoculture of artificially fertilized corn. Grazing cattle do not add concentrated methane, or deteriorate landscapes.
In their naturally evolved context, cattle replenish and support biodiversity. In the factory farm, they are yet another
aberration that adds to the loss of biodiversity. Another simple way to look at it, it to see that which evolved in nature
arrived at the present system of life on earth that in “circle of life” fashion, continues to ensure life on earth. As
humans developed agriculture, then cities and factories, biodiversity began to
decline. Most mega-fauna (large animals) were hunted to extinction eons ago.
Pollution, garbage, waste, deforestation, mining and much more human activity,
notably burning of fossil fuels, threatens current remaining biodiversity, and, so
too, the future of life. This bleak future is avoidable, as described by E.O. Wilson, in his book, the Future of
Life. Also since modern times, those things brought about by humans that threaten biodiversity can all be reduced to
the idea of waste. Annihilation of the American Bison for example, shows how one missing creature virtually
extinguished native American ways of life. In nature, there is no waste. All debris and death
gives rise to life. The idea of garbage, toxins, waste, plastic and contaminants
threatens all biodiversity because artificial waste, in huge quantity, cannot be
digested by nature. The great Pacific garbage patch, a plastic floating Texas size
mess, kills marine animals and birds because they have no natural ability to digest,
or disentangle from plastic trash. Glass would be a simple technology to protect such life, but few
people care because they do not know loss of biodiversity threatens human life, too.
Solvency
Ocean exploration will lead to environmental stewardship
Cousteau(special correspondent for CNN, co-founder EarthEcho International)March 13th, 2012
(Philippe,“Why exploring the ocean is mankind's next giant leap”, Light Years,
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/13/why-exploring-the-ocean-is-mankinds-next-giant-leap/)
We now have a golden opportunity and a pressing need to recapture that pioneering spirit. A
new era of ocean
exploration can yield discoveries that will help inform everything from critical
medical advances to sustainable forms of energy. Consider that AZT, an early treatment for HIV,
is derived from a Caribbean reef sponge, or that a great deal of energy - from offshore wind, to OTEC (ocean thermal
energy conservation), to wind and wave energy - is yet untapped in our oceans. Like unopened presents under the
tree, the ocean is a treasure trove of knowledge. In addition, such discoveries will have a tremendous impact on
economic growth by creating jobs as well as technologies and goods. In addition to new discoveries, we
also have the opportunity to course correct when it comes to stewardship of our
oceans. Research and exploration can go hand in glove with resource management
and conservation. Over the last several decades, as the United States has been
exploring space, we’ve exploited and polluted our oceans at an alarming rate
without dedicating the needed time or resources to truly understand the critical
role they play in the future of the planet. It is not trite to say that the oceans are the
life support system of this planet, providing us with up to 70 percent of our oxygen,
as well as a primary source of protein for billions of people, not to mention the
regulation of our climate. Despite this life-giving role, the world has fished, mined
and trafficked the ocean's resources to a point where we are actually seeing
dramatic changes that is seriously impacting today's generations. And that impact will
continue as the world's population approaches 7 billion people, adding strain to the world’s resources unlike any
humanity has ever had to face before. In the long term, destroying our ocean resources is bad business with
devastating consequences for the global economy, and the health and sustainability of all creatures - including
humans. Marine spatial planning, marine sanctuaries, species conservation,
sustainable fishing strategies, and more must be a part of any ocean exploration
and conservation program to provide hope of restoring health to our oceans.
While there is still much to learn and discover through space exploration, we also
need to pay attention to our unexplored world here on earth. Our next big leap into
the unknown can be every bit as exciting and bold as our pioneering work in space.
It possesses the same "wow" factor: alien worlds, dazzling technological feats and
the mystery of the unknown. The United States has the scientific muscle, the
diplomatic know-how and the entrepreneurial spirit to lead the world in exploring
and protecting our ocean frontier.
Having an interest in the ocean means we protect it- exploration promotes
this
Diamandis (Chairman & CEO of XPRIZE)10/24/13( Dr. Peter H., “A New Age of Ocean Exploration May
Just Save Us”, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/x-prize-foundation/a-new-age-of-oceanexplor_b_4158380.html)
With the challenges we currently face, environmentally and economically, we
cannot leave exploration of our blue planet up to governments alone. Instead,
quite the opposite: We need to crowdsource innovators from around the globe to
take up the charge of discovering the secrets our ocean holds, while working to
preserve it. Consider the challenges facing the ocean: carbon dioxide absorbed
from the atmosphere has made the ocean 30% more acidic than it was just 200
years ago, with devastating consequences for corals, mollusks, fish, and entire
ecosystems. Pollution from plastics to fertilizers creates massive "dead zones" and swirling gyres of garbage that
further sicken the seas upon which the health of the planet depends. Unabated overfishing has shown that 90% of the
big fish in the sea are now gone. How can we turn back this tide of challenges affecting the
health of our ocean unless we first value the ocean? And valuing it means not just
taking a personal interest, but taking the time to understand the challenges and
creating real incentives, particularly financial incentives, behind the sustainable
use of our ocean. By building industries that have a vested interest in the ocean, we stand a much better
chance of protecting the health of the planet. This is the model of XPRIZE: to catalyze industries that not only build
economies based on new frontiers, but industries that become the leaders in serving humanity's needs now and in the
future. There is a very real opportunity with our ocean to build these industries. Because they remain
unexplored, there is tremendous value still ready to be discovered. Indeed, the
opportunities for things like pharmaceuticals from deep-sea creatures bring us
new biochemical discoveries from nearly every deep-sea mission. And with an
estimated 91% of sea life still unknown, this gives us a literal ocean of opportunity
to discover more. By properly measuring and documenting the chemical and
physical characteristics of our seas, we can initiate whole new industries in ocean
services - the type of data-driven information and forecasting that can be used by
every company dependent on the ocean, from tourism to trade to weather services.
I believe now is the critical time to ignite a new age of ocean exploration. At XPRIZE we
recently launched our second ocean prize, the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, to spur development of
breakthroughs in pH measuring tools that explore the chemistry of our seas. And we are, for the first time,
committing to launch three additional ocean prizes by 2020. Because we trust that by harnessing
the
power of innovation, and the dreams of explorers around the world, valuable new
discoveries can help us achieve a healthy ocean.
NOAA exploration uncovers research and solutions to marine biodiversity
loss
CAS 10 (California Academy of Sciences, Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability “Deep-Sea Exploration and
Biodiversity Discovery” http://research.calacademy.org/izg/news/2961)
Gary Williams, Curator of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, was the invertebrate zoologist on board the
ROV Deep-Sea Coral Cruise in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS), between
October 1 and 12. The goals of the cruise included the exploration and documentation of deep reefs in the
marine sanctuary, and to conduct digital imaging and specimen collection . The cruise took place on
the NOAA Research Vessel Fulmar and was sponsored by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that part of the U.S. Department of
Commerce that administers the National Marine Sanctuary system. An ROV was used
for the deep-sea exploration. ROV stands for Remote Operational Vehicle, a tethered undersea robot that
is capable of still and video photography as well as specimen collection. Three deep-sea regions
were explored on the continental shelf near the Farallones Islands and on the edge of the shelf near
the continental slope. The Academy is the repository of all specimens collected during the cruise. A
wealth of material was brought back for the Academy’s marine invertebrate
collections, including sponges, corals, barnacles, and echinoderms. Rockfish and
lingcod were the most commonly encountered fish at all depths. High resolution
digital images and video of deep-sea biotic communities between 125 and 450
meters in depth was highly successful. A robotic grasping arm is used to collect specimens and
to deposit them in a collecting box at the front of the ROV. The intense pressure encountered at depth and
the change to sea level does not affect organisms that do not have air spaces, such as marine invertebrates.
Management and conservation policy-making in our marine reserves calls for
knowledge of regional deep-sea biodiversity and the monitoring of the impact of
past trawling practices, as well as the effects of pollution and other environmental
factors. In addition, proposed boundary changes for marine reserves is dependent
on deep-sea exploration and biodiversity assessment, such as was conducted on
this cruise.
Long-term data collection facilitates the exploration of marine species and
adaptation
Hofmann et al 2/24 (Gretchen Hofmann, professor of Evolution and Marine Biology in the
Department of Ecology at the University of California Santa Barbara, 2/24/2014, “Exploring local
adaptation and the ocean acidification seascape – studies in the California Current Large Marine
Ecosystem”, Biogeosciences journal, pdf|| Alice)
A central goal of researchers within the OMEGAS consortium is to link biological
performance with environmental variability in ocean carbonate chemistry along
what we hypothesized would be a mosaic or gradient of conditions that might
foster local adaptation. Long-term observations have been invaluable in defining
the rate of OA progression in lowlatitude, open ocean biomes and records from
sub-tropical gyre time-series stations (e.g., Bermuda Atlantic Time Series “BATS”,
http://www.bios.edu/research/bats.html; Hawaiian Ocean Times Series “HOT”,
http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/ hot/hot_jgofs.html; European Station for Time Series in the Ocean
“ESTOC” http://www.eurosites.info/estoc.php) show a decline of ocean pH from −0.02 to −0.04 pH units
over a 20 yr period against low-frequency seasonal oscillations of similar magnitude (Bates et al., 2012;
Dore et al., 2009; Santana-Casiano et al. 2007). For coastal regions, the scientific community
is just now assessing the longer-term variability in pH. Recent analyses of long-term data
sets indicate that pH is changing rapidly in coastal Washington (Wootton and Pfister, 2012), in coastal
upwelling zones along the US Pacific coast (Harris et al., 2013; Chan et al., 2014), at a coastal region in the
Netherlands (Provoost et al., 2010), and in the Monterey Bay area where low pH water is associated with
low oxygen water masses that reach the shallow, nearshore regions (Booth et al., 2012). Cruise data
have provided snapshots of carbonate chemistry along the coast of the CCLME
(Feely et al., 2008), and suggested that at some locations in northern California,
undersaturated waters shoaled in the inner shelf. Prior to OMEGAS, however, no
coordinated inner-shelf time series were available that would allow evaluation of the frequency, intensity
and spatial expanse with which coastal ecosystems experience rapid acidification. The recent
development of autonomously recording pH sensors (Martz et al., 2010) has helped to
bridge this data gap. Easily deployed on either moorings or benthic (e.g., rocky
intertidal) locations, these sensors facilitate the collection of environmental pH
data in a variety of habitats and support the collection of long-term data sets that
more comprehensively characterize the OA seascape (Hofmann et al., 2013). Recent
deployments of these sensors has highlighted that different ocean ecosystems display a great deal of
natural variability in pH (Frieder et al., 2012; Hofmann et al., 2011; Kroeker et al., 2011; Price et al.,
2012). Importantly, these sensors have created an affordable option for marine
scientists to describe spatial patterns in ocean chemistry across dynamic coastal
systems. In these environments, characterization of local-scale differences can be
ecologically and economically critical, but require discrete sampling efforts that
are often logistically and cost-prohibitive. Additionally, this strategy facilitates
identification of refuges from future ocean acidification, information that would
provide information to managers of coastal ecosystems and resources. It also
allows the exploration of patterns of local adaptation to carbonate chemistry
across large marine ecosystems such as the CCLME, where previous studies have
demonstrated possible genetic differences among populations (De Wit and Palumbi,
2012; Kelly et al., 2013; Pespeni et al., 2012, 2013a, b, c).
The oceans are under-recorded—increased exploration is crucial for
ecosystem services and biodiversity
Webb et al 10 (Dr. Thomas Webb, Research fellow at the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at
the University of Sheffield (UK), “Biodiversity's Big Wet Secret: The Global Distribution of Marine
Biological Records Reveals Chronic Under-Exploration of the Deep Pelagic Ocean”, PLOS ONE journal,
pdf|| Alice)
Our results clearly show that the deep oceans are vastly under-represented in
OBIS, the world's largest provider of information on the distribution of marine
species. More than this, however, we have also shown that midwater habitats
throughout the global oceans are under-recorded relative to surface waters and
the sea bed. Taken together, this shows that the least well recorded region of the
marine environment is the largest by volume: the deep pelagic ocean. There are two
possible explanations for this: either the deep pelagic ocean is especially low in biomass, or it has been
especially under-sampled (or some combination of the two). Historically, the first of these possibilities has
been espoused. For instance, Charles Wyville Thomson, leader of the Challenger Expedition in the 1870s
which effectively launched the discipline of deep sea biology [11], believed that ’the fauna of deep water is
confined primarily to two belts, one at and near the surface and the other on and near the bottom; leaving
an intermediate zone [i.e., the deep pelagic] in which larger animals… are nearly or entirely absent'
(quoted in Ref. 9). More recent evidence suggests, however, that it is under sampling
and net avoidance rather than a lack of organisms that generate the patterns we
have observed. However, new technologies have dramatically altered perceptions
of the deep pelagic ecosystem [10], [21], suggesting that with past techniques, even
high sampling effort may not have resulted in correspondingly high numbers of
biological specimens being collected. The ability to view animals in situ means that
the diversity of organisms not captured by traditional sampling methods, such as
the gelatinous fauna that constitutes up to a quarter of pelagic biomass [10] is now
better understood. Importantly, their abundance is now known to be much higher than most deepsea biologists expected [10]. For instance, the recently discovered new clade of large, active deep sea
annelids (including holopelagic species) occur at high biomass [12]. Thus, the deep pelagic
appears to conform to dictum that the more you survey, the more you find, as
witnessed recently in other marine habitats including fish in the hadal zone [22]
and microbes in surface waters [23], [24]. Such findings have led to estimates of a
million undescribed species in the deep pelagic [10] and the proposal that ‘within
this vast midwater habitat are the planet’s largest animal communities… These
animals probably outnumber all others on Earth' (Ref. 10:848). Clearly, there is much work
still to be done before we can draw conclusions regarding the depth distribution of actual marine
biodiversity from databases of recorded marine biodiversity. Increasing our understanding of
these communities is important for a number of reasons. First are the ecosystem
services they provide, for instance supporting global fisheries, climate regulation,
and bioprospecting [11]. In addition, they have considerable potential as a model
system for testing biogeographic hypotheses, such as large-scale gradients in
diversity. The deep pelagic environment is spatially homogeneous and has been very stable over time,
with little in the way of seasonal and latitudinal variability [10], and yet latitudinal gradients appear to
exist in the diversity of at least some deep pelagic taxa [8]. Might this provide a means to tease
apart the confounding effects of the environment, geometric constraints, and
species tolerances in explaining biogeographic patterns [25], [26]? More generally,
it may prove easier to unravel the multiple drivers of change in marine
ecosystems, including historical human influences and future climate change, by
studying those habitats that have been least affected to date – the mid-ocean, midwater environment – before transferring this understanding back into more
heavily disturbed coastal and benthic systems [27]. Finally, even if pelagic
ecosystems remain less impacted than coastal regions, there is increasing concern
that human activities including fishing, pollution and climate change have already
had substantial effects, and that these pressures are only likely to increase in
future [11], [28]-[30]. Although some conservation measures, in particular the establishment of pelagic
marine protected areas, may be possible in the absence of detailed biological information [28], clearly an
increased understanding of the temporal and spatial dynamics of pelagic
organisms will improve their effectiveness. We hope that exposing biodiversity's big wet
secret will stimulate further exploration of Earth's biggest ecosystem.
Ocean exploration and monitoring allows scientists to link data and create
reliable models—key to adaptive strategies and maintaining ecosystems
Nicol et al 12 (Dr. Simon J Nicol, principle fisheries scientist at the Secretariat of the Pacific
Community, 10/9/2012, “An ocean observation system for monitoring the affects of climate change on the
ecology and sustainability of pelagic fisheries in the Pacific Ocean”, Climatic Change journal, pdf || Alice)
Comprehensive monitoring of mid-trophic level organisms is crucial for
parameterising and constraining the numerical models of those communities that
allow explicit linking of ocean circulation, biogeochemical interactions and higher
trophic-levels (Le Borgne et al. 2011). Further validation of the sub-model describing the functional
groups of micronektonic prey is an identified priority for SEAPODYM (Lehodey et al. 2012). Similar needs
are also identified for the multi-species model for theWestern PacificWarm Pool (Allain et al. 2007).
Acoustic surveys are increasingly showing that mid-trophic biomasses are generally higher than
previously thought (Kloser et al. 2009). Combining acoustic data with taxonomic data from
stomach analyses will produce more reliable inputs into regional ecosystem
models (e.g. Griffiths et al. 2010). In addition, time series of distribution and abundance
of midtrophic level species are necessary to identify indicator species and monitor
community level changes associated with environmental variability, climate
change, and/or fishing impact. Indicator species may act as sentinels for pending
large-scale changes in pelagic ecosystems, thereby giving fisheries managers cues
to rapidly implement adaptive strategies (e.g. adjustment of regional tuna fishing effort
allocations; Bell et al. 2011). We encourage comparisons and standardizations of the
pelagic ecosystem models already developed for the Pacific, to compare both the
function and structure of the Eastern, Central, Western and Southern Pacific
Ocean ecosystems, and the methods used to develop the models. This comparison
would also help develop a candidate list of indicators of ecosystem status and
change, including and beyond the sentinel species described above. This
information is needed for managing marine resources to ensure ecosystem
integrity and the maintenance of beneficial services and products for PICTs and other nations.
Indicators could also serve to include Pacific Ocean ecosystems within existing international comparative
initiatives that report and study marine ecosystem structures and functions thereby providing opportunity
for global analyses (Shin et al. 2012).
Climate Change
Ocean concentrations key to solving climate change
Conley 11 (Daniel Conley, Professor of Biogeochemistry and Lund University, Research field:
Variations in the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere over millions of years, in order to better understand
climate changes and the greenhouse effect. “Evidence on ocean floor illuminates changes in climate”
http://www.wallenberg.com/kaw/node/378)
Researchers at Lund University are mapping evidence in sediment at the bottom of the sea
that is tens of millions of years old. This primordial geology can be tied to carbon dioxide
concentrations in the atmosphere, something that can shed new light on the
planet’s changes in climate.Many scientists around the world are eager to understand how the earth’s climate has changed
throughout the time, and in this quest analyses of the weathering of rocks during millions of years play a key role, according to Daniel Conley, professor
of biogeochemistry at Lund University.“Today we have only limited knowledge of how the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has varied across
long periods of time, and knowing more about this would be of great importance in achieving a detailed picture of the whole course of
development.”Now, with the distinction of being named a Wallenberg Scholar, Daniel Conley has the opportunity to embark upon a new research
project. The
idea is to chart geological processes up to 542 million years back in time.
There are in fact strong links between the weathering of rocks and the
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When carbon dioxide moves
from the atmosphere to the earth, a chemical process starts. Carbon dioxide
affects the chemical composition of rocks, which begin to weather, transform and
breakdown into elements dissolved in water. Therefore, the rate of decomposition of
mineral types is an indication of how the carbon dioxide cycles function. But this is
not the only knowledge that this research project can contribute. In the course of
evolution, organisms emerged that use silicon dioxide their shells or supporting
structutes. Many of these species are found at the bottom of the sea.“These include,
among others, sponges and diatoms,” says Daniel Conley. “They take up enormous
amounts of silicon dioxide and thereby change the concentration of silicon in the
oceans. If there’s lots of silicon dioxide in the water, then they take up a lot, and
vice versa. They can therefore be used as a litmus test to determine what the
silicon concentration has looked like.” The findings thereby tell indirect tales
about changes in carbon dioxide content, since the link is so strong between
carbon and silicon. Analyzing fossils on the ocean floor To obtain reliable figures, these
researchers are using different approaches. One method is to examine traces that
lie hidden in fossils, on the bottom of the seas and in cliffs. Daniel Conley shows some pictures of
fossils that are 45 million years old. “These are from drill cores in ocean sediment. We take something that looks like dirt, clean it, and find different
organisms. They have different enzyme systems that have different capacities to take up silicon dioxide. Diatoms are very efficient, whereas the older
sponges are very inefficient. No one has researched sponges in the past, and we believe that the key has been found to recreate the entire process.”
Another approach is to analyze isotopes of silicon in various materials. What’s more, the
scientists are creating models based on already gathered data that can show how
the geochemical processes have developed throughout the ages. The grant from the Foundation
now enables them also to carry out their own field studies. “We’re visiting the Okavango Delta in Botswana, among other sites. It’s a biological hotspot,
a truly incredible environment.” What primarily interests Conley are ecosystems that are dominated by grasses. Grass takes up large amounts of silicon
dioxide, so the project is also studying how the development of grassy areas has influenced the turnover of silicon dioxide over time. “Bamboo, which is
actually a grass, consists of one fifth silicon dioxide. This explains why bamboo is so durable as a construction material.”“I was elated when I heard
about the award. Now I’ll have five years of freedom to develop ideas I’ve been carrying around in my back pocket for several years. This is a
tremendous opportunity and a great honor.”
A broad observing system monitors climate change—key to prevention of
further consequences of warming
Smith 10 (Ryan Smith, Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Robotics Embedded Systems Laboratory,
Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, March 2010, “USC CINAP
Builds Bridges”, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Robotics & Automation
Magazine, pdf|| Alice)
As a whole, the CINAPS network provides a small area of coverage in a larger global ocean observation
initiative. Global ocean monitoring is vital to the future of mankind, as the ocean is a
vast resource that provides transportation and food, as well as regulates the
earth’s climate. Rising sea temperatures, overfishing, and pollution pose threats
that need to be constantly measured and monitored. An integrated ocean
observation system could provide early warning of storms ( e.g., hurricanes and
tsunamis), safer maritime operations and conservation of fish stocks, as well as a
collection of the vital signs of the ocean needed to monitor and assess long-term
climate change . Starting in 2008, the National Science Foundation proposed to spend US$309.5
million more than six years to build an integrated ocean observatory network; an additional US$240
million will be spent on maintenance and operations [30]. This project will be managed by the scientistled Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Network (ORION), which will contract with oceanographic
institutions and companies to build the separate pieces. As this project is in the initial stages, it is
currently up to the individual institutions to raise money and construct regional observing systems, e.g.,
the CINAPS network. As more centers are constructed, we can integrate our center into
a larger ocean observing network, aggregate our collected data, and contribute to
the assessment of the world’s oceans. Currently, we are in collaboration with MBARI as well as
the California Coastal Ocean Observing System (CCOOS), which contains the Northern, Central, and
Southern (NCOOS, CenCOOS and SCCOOS, respectively) regional components.
Ocean exploration resolves variability and data collection is necessary for
long-term climate change assessments
Abraham & Nuccitelli 14 (John Abraham, professor of thermal and fluid sciences at the University
of St. Thomas School of Engineering, and Dana Nuccitelli, environmental scientist, 6/11/2014, “Scientists
in focus – Lyman and Johnson explore the rapidly warming oceans”,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jun/11/scientists-infocus-lyman-johnson || Alice)
"Deep Argo! Most of the world oceans under 2000 meters are woefully under-
sampled. Deep Argo will extend the Argo array to the bottom and for the first time
we will be able to resolve most of the large-scale variability in the world’s oceans.
We will be able to resolve how much heat is really going deep. There is also the added
excitement of exploring an area of the world that so little is known about and being the first to describe
it." While John has made many great contributions to the field, he is most fond of two items in particular.
The first is a major study he had published in Nature that described and quantified warming of the oceans
and another study that was written while a post-doc that used a simple stability model to describe tropical
waves; these waves are important to the ENSO process. I put the same questions to Greg, an
oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and an affiliate professor with the
University of Washington. He told me that he went into oceanography because he, “wanted to combine
my interest in physics with my love of the sea. For the first decade or so of my career, I studied mostly
ocean temperature, salinity, and currents, and their variability. However, as time has gone on, the
importance to climate variations over seasons to millennia have become increasingly apparent, and
important in my work.” Johnson's research is important because, "With the buildup of
greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, more energy enters the Earth environment
than escapes. Over the last 4 decades, 93% of this energy imbalance has warmed
the ocean, with about 3% warming the land, 3% melting ice, and 1% warming and
adding moisture to the atmosphere. Warmed oceans also expand, raising sea level.
Hence measuring how much the oceans are warming and where is important to
understanding how much and how fast the Earth will warm and sea level will rise."
Greg and his team collect much of their data using Conductivity-Temperature-Depth instruments (CTDs
for short). They make accurate measurements of the ocean waters. The CTDs are
positioned on autonomous floats (Argo floats), lowered on ship-borne cables, or
even attached to marine animals. He also says, “In my research, I also use data from many other
sources including sea level, sea-surface-temperature, sea-surface-salinity, winds, and even ocean mass
variations from satellites. I also use current data from drifting buoys, Argo floats, and various types of
current meters including acoustic Doppler instruments.” I asked Greg what his biggest scientific
contribution has been and he responded, “The data my research group and I have worked to collect over
the past three decades.” He's right; those data allow long-term assessments of the changes
to the world’s waters . So why write about these oceanographers in my first SCIENTISTS IN FOCUS
post? It is because, whenever someone asks me whether we can prove the world is warming, it is to the
research of Greg, John, and their colleagues that I point them. The story of climate change is largely a
story of the oceans. They are wide, deep, and hard to measure. But the painstaking
work these scientists have undertaken has provided a remarkably good picture of
the health of the oceans and a view toward the future of the planet.
Increased oceanic data collection is the first step to respond to climate
change
McNutt 13 (Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science, 8/30/2013, “Accelerating Ocean Exploration”,
Science journal, pdf || Alice)
Last month, a distinguished group of ocean researchers and explorers convened in Long Beach,
California, at the Aquarium of the Pacific to assess progress and future prospects in ocean exploration.
Thirteen years ago, U.S. President Clinton challenged a similar group to provide a blueprint for ocean
exploration and discovery. Since then, the fundamental rationale has not changed: to
collect high-quality data on the physics, chemistry, biology, and geology of the
oceans that can be used to answer known questions as well as those we do not yet
know enough to pose, to develop new instruments and systems to explore the
ocean in new dimensions, and to engage a new generation of youth in science and
technology. Recently, however, exploration has taken on a more urgent imperative: to
record the substantial changes occurring in largely undocumented regions of the
ocean. With half of the ocean more than 10 kilometers from the nearest depth
sounding, ecosystem function in the deep sea still a mystery, and no first-order
baseline for many globally important ocean processes, the current pace of
exploration is woefully inadequate to address this daunting task, especially as the
planet responds to changes in climate. To meet this challenge, future ocean exploration must
depart dramatically from the classical ship-based expeditions of the past devoted to mapping and
sampling. As a first step, future exploration should make better use of autonomous
platforms that are equipped with a broader array of in situ sensors, for lower-cost
data gathering. Fortunately, new, more nimble, and easily deployed platforms are available, ranging
from $200 kits for build-your-own remotely operated vehicles to long-range autonomous underwater
vehicles (AUVs), solar-powered autonomous platforms, autonomous boats, AUVs that operate
cooperatively in swarming behavior through the use of artificial intelligence, and gliders that can cross
entire oceans. New in situ chemical and biological sensors allow the probing of ocean
processes in real time in ways not possible if samples are processed later in
laboratories. Exploration also would greatly benefit from improvements in
telepresence. For expeditions that require ships (very distant from shore and requiring the return of
complex samples), experts on shore can now “join” through satellite links, enlarging the pool of
talent available to comment on the importance of discoveries as they happen and
to participate in real-time decisions that affect expedition planning. This type of
communication can enrich the critical human interactions that guide the discovery
process on such expeditions.
Observational data and modeling is key to understanding climate change—
ocean exploration tech solves
Yang 13 (Jun Yang, Associate Professor at the Center for Earth System Science at Tsinghua University,
October 2013, “The role of satellite remote sensing in climate change studies”, Nature, pdf|| Alice)
Observational data and model simulations are the foundations of our
understanding of the climate system1. Satellite remote sensing (SRS) — which
acquires information about the Earth’s surface, subsurface and atmosphere
remotely from sensors on board satellites (including geodetic satellites) — is an
important component of climate system observations. Since the first space observation of
solar irradiance and cloud reflection was made with radiometers onboard the Vanguard-2 satellite in
19592, SRS has gradually become a leading research method in climate change
studies3. The use of satellites allows the observation of states and processes of the
atmosphere, land and ocean at several spatio-temporal scales. For instance, it is one
of the most efficient approaches for monitoring land cover and its changes
through time over a variety of spatial scales4,5. Satellite data are frequently used
with climate models to simulate the dynamics of the climate system and to
improve climate projections6. Satellite data also contribute significantly to the improvement of
meteorological reanalysis products that are widely used for climate change research, for example, the
National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis7. The Global Climate Observing
System (GCOS) has listed 26 out of 50 essential climate variables (ECVs) as
significantly dependent on satellite observations8. Data from SRS is also widely
used for developing prevention, mitigation and adaptation measures to cope with
the impact of climate change9.
Disease
Ocean exploration pioneers resistant antibiotics—solves public health
NAS 7 (The National Academies, “Oceans and Human Health: Highlights of National Academies Reports,”
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/osb/miscellaneous/Oceans-Human-Health.pdf)
The Ocean Is the Most Promising Frontier for Sources of New Drugs In 1945, a
young organic chemist
named Werner Bergmann set out to explore the waters off the coast of southern Florida.
Among the marine organisms he scooped from the sand that day was a Caribbean
sponge that would later be called Cryptotethya crypta. Back in his lab, Bergmann extracted a
novel compound from this sponge that aroused his curiosity. The chemical Bergmann identified in
this sponge, spongothymidine, eventually led to the development of a whole class
of drugs that treat cancer and viral diseases and are still in use today. For example,
Zidovudine (AZT) fights the AIDS virus, HIV, and cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C) is
used in the treatment of leukemias and lymphomas. Acyclovir speeds the healing of eczema
and some herpes viruses. These are just a few examples of how the study of marine organisms contributes to the
health of thousands of men, women, and children around the world. New
antibiotics, in addition to
new drugs for fighting cancer, inflammatory diseases, and neurodegenerative
diseases (which often cannot be treated successfully today), are greatly needed.
With drug resistance nibbling away at the once-full toolbox of antibiotics, the
limited effectiveness of currently available drugs has dire consequences for public
health. Historically, many medicines have come from nature—mostly from land-based natural organisms.
Because scientists have nearly exhausted the supply of terrestrial plants, animals,
and microorganisms that have interesting medical properties, new sources of
drugs are needed. Occupying more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean is a virtually
unexplored treasure chest of new and unidentified species—one of the last
frontiers for sources of new natural products. These natural products are of special interest
because of the dazzling diversity and uniqueness of the creatures that make the sea their home. One reason
marine organisms are so interesting to scientists is because in adapting to the
various ocean environments, they have evolved fascinating repertoires of unique
chemicals to help them survive. For example, anchored to the seafloor, a sponge that
protects itself from an animal trying to take over its space by killing the invader
has been compared with the human immune system trying to kill foreign cancer
cells. That same sponge, bathed in seawater containing millions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, some of which could be
pathogens, has developed antibiotics to keep those pathogens under control. Those same antibiotics could be used to treat
infections in humans. Sponges, in fact, are among the most prolific sources of diverse chemical compounds. An estimated 30
percent of all potential marine-derived medications currently in the pipeline—and about 75 percent of recently patented marinederived anticancer compounds—come from marine sponges. Marine-based microorganisms are another particularly rich source
of new medicines. More than 120 drugs available today derive from land-based microbes. Scientists
see marinebased microbes as the most promising source of novel medicines from the sea. In all,
more than 20,000 biochemical compounds have been isolated from sea creatures since the 1980s. Because drug discovery in the
marine frontier is a relatively young field, only
a few marine-derived drugs are in use today. Many
others are in the pipeline. One example is Prialt, a drug developed from the venom
of a fish-killing cone snail. The cone snails produce neurotoxins to paralyze and kill prey; those neurotoxins are
being developed as neuromuscular blocks for individuals with chronic pain, stroke, or epilepsy. Other marine derived drugs are
being tested against herpes, asthma, and breast cancer. The
National Research Council report Marine
Biotechnology in the Twenty-First Century (2002) concluded that the exploration of unique
habitats, such as deep-sea environments, and the isolation and culture of marine
microorganisms offer two underexplored opportunities for discovery of novel
chemicals with therapeutic potential. The successes to date, which are based upon
a very limited investigation of both deep-sea organisms and marine
microorganisms, suggest a high potential for continued discovery of new drugs.
Marine algae increases tracking capability—mitigates disease breakout
NAS 7 (The National Academies, “Oceans and Human Health: Highlights of National Academies Reports,”
http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/osb/miscellaneous/Oceans-Human-Health.pdf)
Better Tracking Can Help Prevent Human Exposure to Algal Toxins Scientists
are now developing
exciting new technologies for identifying algal blooms, including ways to spot them from
space. Scientists have also been designing a number of promising tools to detect the presence of algal toxins
rapidly and to track their route of transfer throughout the environment. Being able to predict when a harmful
algal bloom will become dangerous for humans would make health officials better prepared to make management
decisions that protect the public from exposure, such as temporary beach and fishing closures.
Epidemiology—the study of the occurrences of diseases in populations—can be
used to identify disease “hot spots.” By investigating what sick people have in
common, scientists can often trace the cause of the problem, such as an algal
bloom, and warn the public accordingly. Without such warnings, people can
become ill and not know why. In many cases, illnesses related to marine toxins go
unreported. Epidemiological studies also alert the medical community to the
presence of harmful algal blooms or other events so they recognize the symptoms
in their patients. From Monsoons to Microbes concludes that there is a need both to document the
incidence of toxin-related illness in coastal areas and among travelers who visit high-risk areas and to train public
health authorities in coastal states to recognize and respond to toxin-related illnesses. Tracking
has been
most useful in cases where the acute effects from toxic algae resulted in a cluster
of illnesses. It is also important to consider sublethal or subsymptomatic effects
that can result from low-level exposure to toxic algae, which are only now being
studied and understood.
Science Diplomacy
Solves Proliferation
Science diplomacy key to non-prolif – cooperation catalyzes the necessary
political conditions
Davison et al. 10 (Niel, PhD, Senior Policy Adviser in the Science Policy Centre at the Royal Society;
Koppelman Ben, Senior Policy Adviser in the Science Policy Centre at the Royal Society; Tannenbaum,
Benn, PhD, Program Director, Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy. Royal Society, March
2010. royalsociety.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294970228) JM
Despite political challenges, progress can still be made through international
cooperation on the scientific aspects of disarmament. Investing in such research
has diplomatic benefits by providing concrete evidence of Nuclear Weapon States
taking seriously their obligations to pursue disarmament under the NPT. This
cooperation could catalyse the political conditions necessary for multilateral
disarmament by helping to build much needed trust between states . Since all states
will be stakeholders in any future disarmament process, international cooperation must also include NonNuclear Weapon States from the outset to ensure the transparency of this process. The scientific
community often works beyond national boundaries on problems of common
interest and so is well-placed to help prepare the foundations for future
multilateral negotiations .1 The timescale for complete nuclear disarmament will be long, and so
focusing now on the detailed challenges of the final stages of the process may be premature. A more
practical approach might be to establish the scientific requirements of a
monitoring and verification system to support future negotiations, especially
when this can produce tangible and immediate improvements to international
security. Scientific cooperation is also essential in related nonproliferation and
arms control areas to ensure that new instabilities are not introduced that could
undermine nuclear disarmament. This includes research into: managing the civilian nuclear fuel
cycle; improving the physical security of nuclear material and facilities; verifying a Fissile Material CutOff Treaty; and strengthening the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Given the growing political
momentum for nuclear arms control and disarmament, the scientific community has an
opportunity to advise the international community about this research and the
cooperation needed to carry it out. Disarmament laboratories have the potential to develop a
truly international approach. They could help facilitate exchange not just between states; but also between
government, industry and academia so that the latest scientific advances can be integrated
into the development of solutions to the challenges that lie ahead.
Solves Conflict
Science diplomacy is key to collaborating with adversaries despite political
tensions
Park 12 (Madison Park, reporter for CNN International, 4/18/2012, “Using science to bring together
enemies”, http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/18/health/north-korea-science-diplomacy|| Alice)
(CNN) -- While tensions remain high between the United States and North Korea,
the relationship is more cordial between their scientists. Scientists from both
nations are collaborating via nongovernmental organizations and universities on
projects ranging from tuberculosis research and deforestation issues to digital
information technology. The idea behind science diplomacy is to build bridges and
relationships through research and academics despite political tensions. This
month, a delegation of North Korean economic experts visited Silicon Valley to see various American
businesses and academic institutions such as Stanford University. It may seem like a bizarre concept that
two countries, at odds with each other, would share scientific knowledge. But science diplomacy
existed between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, as
researchers cooperated on nuclear issues, space missions and technology. And
this practice continues, with U.S. scientists working with academics and
researchers from adversarial states like Iran, Cuba and North Korea. "A group of
us who believe in science diplomacy, believe that it is useful to find people in those
countries with whom you can find something in common, with whom you can
discuss and can perhaps cooperate in areas not strategic, military or defenserelated ," said Dr. Norman Neureiter, senior adviser to the Center for Science, Technology and Security
Policy, which is part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science.
Solves Climate Change + Prolif
Science diplomacy responds to climate change and prevents nuclear prolif
Espy 13 (Nicole Espy, PhD candidate in Biological Sciences of Public Health at Harvard University,
2/18/2013, “Science and Diplomacy”, http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2013/science-and-diplomacy||
Alice)
Science as a topic of Diplomacy Science is at the heart of many international diplomatic
discussions. For example, nuclear research has been a hot topic in international
politics for the past 60 years. Nuclear research has enabled us to harness the power of
nuclear fission for nuclear energy, but it has also resulted in the creation of nuclear arms that
have led to a great deal of destruction. To ensure nuclear research continues in a safe and
responsible manner, nations have worked together to develop a system of
oversight and accountability. These diplomatic efforts have resulted in the
establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose early slogan was “Atoms
for Peace.” This agency provides technical guidelines and assistance to countries for safe use of tools and
techniques involving nuclear and radioactive materials. It also attempts to make public the development
of nuclear arms programs in countries around the world so that other world leaders can take appropriate
action. The International Atomic Energy Agency is a model for how scientists and policy
makers can share information and work toward shared interests. Climate change
is another major driver of international diplomatic negotiations. The impact of
climate change on people’s lives is largely unpredictable and non-uniform across
different regions. In response, national leaders similarly vary in their willingness
to consent to international agreements concerning means to cut green house gas
emissions. While the scientific consensus is that greenhouse-gas emissions are a major cause of global
warming, the debate surrounding climate change at the global diplomatic level concerns the methods that
should be employed to slow global warming and which countries should carry the brunt of the
socioeconomic responsibility
Solves Stuff
Science diplomacy improves scientific tools and facilitates intellectual
exchange—this increases US soft power—prevents nuclear prolif and
responds to climate change
Espy 13 (Nicole Espy, PhD candidate in Biological Sciences of Public Health at Harvard University,
2/18/2013, “Science and Diplomacy”, http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2013/science-and-diplomacy||
Alice)
Diplomacy to improve science Sometimes diplomacy
is used to make new scientific tools available
and to facilitate intellectual exchange . After the Second World War, European scientists in the
field of nuclear physics imagined an organization that would increase
collaboration across Europe and coordinate cost sharing for the building and
maintenance of the facilities this research required. This idea resulted in the
formation of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. The political negotiations to manage the shared
operating costs and the use of CERN facilities, like the Large Hadron Collider, by over half of the world’s physicists from many
different nations and academic institutions are now carried out within the CERN framework to manage the shared operating costs
and the use of the facilities, like the Large Hadron Collider, by over half of the world’s physicists. This
use of diplomacy
has enabled many important discoveries, including the most recent discovery of the Higgs Boson. Other
organizations that are the result of global collaboration include ITER, former known as the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, for the development of nuclear fusion for energy
production , the Square Kilometre Array for the design of the world’s largest radio telescope,
and the International Space Station for space exploration. All of the above organizations have
helped scientists overcome technical (and financial) challenges in their respective
fields that they would not have surmounted on their own. Science to improve Diplomacy
Beyond the contentious subjects of nuclear proliferation and climate change,
science can be a tool to improve diplomatic relations between conflicting nations .
The former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Dr. Joseph Nye, Jr., noted that “ soft power,”
such as international cultural and intellectual collaborations between
international groups, helps maintain a positive global attitude between
participating nations and can result in favorable political alliances. Scientific
collaborations are a powerful example of soft power, since science is
internationally respected as an impartial endeavor. The United States is using science as soft power in
its diplomatic relations between Yemen, North Korea, and others. Yemen currently suffers from multiple social and environmental
issues, including a large influx of African refugees, displaced Yemenis due to internal conflict, and a disappearing water supply. Each
person in Yemen is estimated to have access to only 136 cubic meters of freshwater per person, well below the
“water
poverty line” set by the United Nations Development Program at 1000 cubic meters per person. This large gap can only
be overcome with improvements in water technology that are innovative and
sustainable. Toward this end, American and Yemeni scientists, engineers and students met last summer in Jordan, another
water poor country, for a conference hosted by the Middle East Scientific Institute for Security to discuss strategies for better water
management and to establish collaborations. While limited in impact, this conference was an indirect way for the US to practically
demonstrate its support for the people of Yemen and to shift favor away from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an affiliate of the
international Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Thus, meetings like this, in conjunction with political support, military support and
development aid, are a part of the US’s efforts to improve diplomatic ties with Yemen, as well as
combat the spreading influence of extremist groups. As was the case for the conception of CERN, the Synchrotron-light for
Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) is the result of interest among Middle Eastern nuclear
physicists to have a local laboratory dedicated to the nuclear science. The construction of SESAME in Jordan will bring scientists in
the region much closer to facilities similar to those found at institutions like CERN. While SESAME necessitated diplomacy for
scientific advancement, the scientific leadership involved in establishing SESAME set the stage for the unlikely diplomatic relations
between Iran, Palestine, and Israel, among others. This practical collaboration for the pursuit of science has the unique potential to
ease the hostilities between these countries. It also serves as an example of how scientists can make an impact beyond their
respective fields. Traditionally, science training does not include instruction on how to engage with the public or with politicians. But
in our increasingly globalized world, environmental and technological issues are
shared problems. These problems require scientists to share their knowledge with
the public, politicians, and colleagues in their own countries and others around
the world. It requires science itself to be a more international endeavor. Used
properly, science and diplomacy can complement each other and help tackle the
many problems facing our world today.
STEM - Competitiveness
Advantage 1: Competitiveness
Ocean exploration is key to US economic competitiveness
Cousteau 12 [Philippe, special correspondent for CNN, “Why exploring the ocean is mankind's next
giant leap,” March 13th, http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/13/why-exploring-the-ocean-ismankinds-next-giant-leap/, accessed 6/15, AR]
A new era of ocean exploration can yield discoveries that will help inform everything from critical
medical advances to sustainable forms of energy. Consider that AZT, an early treatment for HIV, is
derived from a Caribbean reef sponge, or that a great deal of energy - from offshore wind, to OTEC
(ocean thermal energy conservation), to wind and wave energy - is yet untapped in our oceans.
Like unopened presents under the tree, the ocean is a treasure trove of knowledge. In addition, such
discoveries will have a tremendous impact on economic growth by creating jobs as
well as technologies and goods. In addition to new discoveries, we also have the opportunity to
course correct when it comes to stewardship of our oceans. Research and exploration can go
hand in glove with resource management and conservation. Over the last several
decades, as the United States has been exploring space, we’ve exploited and polluted our oceans at an
alarming rate without dedicating the needed time or resources to truly understand the critical role they
play in the future of the planet. It is not trite to say that the oceans are the life support system of this
planet, providing us with up to 70 percent of our oxygen, as well as a primary source of protein for billions
of people, not to mention the regulation of our climate. Despite this life-giving role, the world has fished,
mined and trafficked the ocean's resources to a point where we are actually seeing dramatic changes that
is seriously impacting today's generations. And that impact will continue as the world's population
approaches 7 billion people, adding strain to the world’s resources unlike any humanity has ever had to
face before. In the long term, destroying our ocean resources is bad business with
devastating consequences for the global economy, and the health and sustainability of all
creatures - including humans. Marine spatial planning, marine sanctuaries, species conservation,
sustainable fishing strategies, and more must be a part of any ocean exploration and conservation
program to provide hope of restoring health to our oceans. While there is still much to learn and discover
through space exploration, we also need to pay attention to our unexplored world here on earth. Our next
big leap into the unknown can be every bit as exciting and bold as our pioneering work in space. It
possesses the same "wow" factor: alien worlds, dazzling technological feats and the mystery of the
unknown. The United States has the scientific muscle, the diplomatic know-how and
the entrepreneurial spirit to lead the world in exploring and protecting our ocean
frontier.
Inherency/Solvency: More Ev
Fund NOAA Solvency
No Exploration Now b/c no funding
US is neglecting ocean exploration in the status quo – the resources and
framework already exist
McClain 12 [Craig, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center Assistant Director of Science, & Alistair,
Australian marine biologist, 10/16, Deep Sea News, “We Need an Ocean NASA Now Pt.1”,
http://deepseanews.com/2012/10/we-need-an-ocean-nasa-now-pt-1/, accessed 7/16/14, AR]
Whether giant fish or giant crustaceans, are opportunities to uncover the ocean’s
mysteries are quickly dwindling.¶ The Ghost of Ocean Science Present¶ Our nation faces a
pivotal moment in exploration of the oceans. The most remote regions of the deep
oceans should be more accessible now than ever due to engineering and technological
advances. What limits our exploration of the oceans is not imagination or
technology but funding. We as a society started to make a choice: to deprioritize
ocean exploration and science.¶ In general, science in the U.S. is poorly funded;
while the total number of dollars spent here is large, we only rank 6th in world in the
proportion of gross domestic product invested into research. The outlook for
ocean science is even bleaker. In many cases, funding of marine science and
exploration, especially for the deep sea, are at historical lows. In others, funding
remains stagnant, despite rising costs of equipment and personnel.¶ The Joint
Ocean Commission Initiative, a committee comprised of leading ocean scientists,
policy makers, and former U.S. secretaries and congressmen, gave the grade of D- to
funding of ocean science in the U.S. Recently the Obama Administration proposed to cut
the National Undersea Research Program (NURP) within NOAA, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, a move supported by the Senate. In NOAA’s own words, “NOAA
determined that NURP was a lower-priority function within its portfolio of
research activities.” Yet, NURP is one of the main suppliers of funding and
equipment for ocean exploration, including both submersibles at the Hawaiian Underwater
Research Laboratory and the underwater habitat Aquarius. This cut has come despite an overall
request for a 3.1% increase in funding for NOAA. Cutting NURP saves a meager $4,000,000
or 1/10 of NOAA’s budget and 1,675 times less than we spend on the Afghan war in just one month.¶ One
of the main reasons NOAA argues for cutting funding of NURP is “that other
avenues of Federal funding for such activities might be pursued.” However, “other
avenues” are fading as well. Some funding for ocean exploration is still available
through NOAA’s Ocean Exploration Program. However, the Office of Ocean
Exploration, the division that contains NURP, took the second biggest cut of all
programs (-16.5%) and is down 33% since 2009. Likewise, U.S. Naval funding for basic
research has also diminished.¶ The other main source of funding for deep-sea science in
the U.S. is the National Science Foundation which primarily supports biological
research through the Biological Oceanography Program. Funding for science
within this program remains stagnant, funding larger but fewer grants. This trend most likely
reflects the ever increasing costs of personnel, equipment, and consumables which only larger projects
can support. Indeed, compared to rising fuel costs, a necessity for oceanographic
vessels, NSF funds do not stretch as far as even a decade ago.¶ Shrinking funds and
high fuel costs have also taken their toll on The University-National Oceanographic
Laboratory System (UNOLS) which operates the U.S. public research fleet. Over the
last decade, only 80% of available ship days were supported through funding. Over
the last two years the gap has increasingly widened, and over the last ten years
operations costs increased steadily at 5% annually. With an estimated shortfall of
$12 million, the only solution is to reduce the U.S. research fleet size. Currently
this is expected to be a total of 6 vessels that are near retirement, but there is no
plan of replacing these lost ships.¶ The situation in the U.S. contrasts greatly with
other countries. The budget for the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and
Technology (JAMSTEC) continues to increase, although much less so in recent years. The
2007 operating budget for the smaller JAMSTEC was $527 million, over $100 million
dollars more than the 2013 proposed NOAA budget. Likewise, China is increasing
funding to ocean science over the next five years and has recently succeeded in building a
new deep-sea research and exploration submersible, the Jiaolong. The only deep submersible still
operating in the US is the DSV Alvin, originally built in 1968.
NOAA doesn’t have the budget that it needs for exploration
Conathan (Director of Ocean Policy for the Center for American Progress) June 20, 2013(Michael,
“Space Exploration Dollars Dwarf Ocean Spending”, News Watch,
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/20/space-exploration-dollars-dwarf-oceanspending/)
“Star
Trek” would have us believe that space is the final frontier, but with apologies
to the armies of Trekkies, their oracle might be a tad off base. Though we know
little about outer space, we still have plenty of frontiers to explore here on our
home planet. And they’re losing the race of discovery. Hollywood giant James Cameron,
director of mega-blockbusters such as “Titanic” and “Avatar,” brought this message to Capitol Hill last week, along
with the single-seat submersible that he used to become the third human to journey to the deepest point of the
world’s oceans—the Marianas Trench. By contrast, more than 500 people have journeyed into
space—including Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who sits on the committee before which
Cameron testified—and 12 people have actually set foot on the surface of the moon.
All it takes is a quick comparison of the budgets for NASA and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to understand why space
exploration is outpacing its ocean counterpart by such a wide margin. In fiscal
year 2013 NASA’s annual exploration budget was roughly $3.8 billion. That same
year, total funding for everything NOAA does—fishery management, weather and
climate forecasting, ocean research and management, among many other
programs—was about $5 billion, and NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Research
received just $23.7 million. Something is wrong with this picture.
House budget for NOAA cuts funding for key exploratory functions
Woglom 5/8 (Emily Woglom is Vice President, Conservation Policy and Programs, for Ocean Conservancy. Ocean
Conservancy “House of Representatives Ignores Calls for Investments in Our Ocean and the People that Depend on
It”http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2014/05/08/house-of-representatives-ignores-calls-for-investments-in-our-ocean-and-thepeople-that-depend-on-it/ 5/8/14)
Just a few months ago, President Obama called for a much-needed boost in federal funding for our ocean. The U.S. House of
Representatives, however, has refused to stand up and answer that call. The
House’s proposed funding bill for
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which was
released this week ignores needed investments in critical areas of ocean science
and conservation, and would even take steps backward, decreasing the amount of
funding for our ocean from current levels. Overall, the bill fails to provide $22.7
million for the National Ocean Service and $46.6 million for the National Marine
Fisheries Service that NOAA has requested – a total loss of nearly $70 million for
our oceans, and $24.5 million below current funding levels. A closer look reveals that the House
proposal: Fails
to increase investment in ocean acidification research to improve our
understanding of acidification impacts on vulnerable communities and businesses—and to
devel-op tools and strategies to tackle the economic, on-the-ground impacts. Fails
to fund Regional Coastal Resilience Grants that could help build resilient coastal
communities that are prepared to face changing ocean conditions, economic conditions, and major events, such as
Superstorm Sandy, that threaten people’s businesses, livelihoods, homes and way of life. Fails to invest in
improvements to oil spill response capacity in the Arctic, where no demonstrated technology or
technique exists to respond effectively to an oil spill in icy waters. The House also fails to increase funding
for the Arctic Observing Network to track and understand profound changes in the
Arctic. Guts funding for climate change science to the tune of nearly $40 million
below current levels, and nearly $70 million below the amount NOAA says we
need. This means that that funding for many much-needed activities would be at
risk, from baseline science and data collection on climate and weather, to cuttingedge research on extreme events — like heat waves, droughts — and how our
communities and businesses can best prepare for them. Experts agree that we need to invest in our
ocean now to support its health and productivity in the future. For example, Secretary of State John Kerry is hosting a major
international conference called “Our Ocean” in June to bring together government officials, scientists, and industry representatives
from all over the world to determine how to address marine issues in a way that will make a difference in people’s lives. At the same
time, efforts like the XPrize Ocean Initiative are leveraging private sector dollars and innovation to answer key questions about our
ocean and advance solutions. The House will pass this funding bill through Committee today, and likely vote on it later this month.
The Obama administration and millions of coastal residents and businesses understand the importance of smart investments in the
health and productivity of our ocean. We hope to see the Senate take responsible action when they produce their own budget for
consideration.
K2: Generic Ocean Exploration
Exploration is decreasing as funds go down
Gonzalez (Senior Editor) 3.19.12 (Robert, “James Cameron says today's ocean exploration is “piss poor.”
He's right.”, IO9, http://io9.com/5894566/james-cameron-says-the-current-state-of-ocean-explorationis-piss-poor-hes-right)
The lack of knowledge surrounding the oceans' depths isn't particularly surprising
when you realize that funding for deep sea research has been dwindling for years.
And according to Craig McClain — chief editor at Deep Sea News, and a deep sea researcher, himself —
more cuts to deep sea funding are imminent. McClain says that John R. Smith, the
Science Director at the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory, recently sent out
an email notifying the community that NOAA has zeroed out funding for the
Undersea Research Program (NURP) for FY13 beginning Oct 1, 2012, and put all
the centers on life support funding (or less) for the current year. Many other
NOAA programs, mostly extramural ones, have been cut to some level, though it
appears only NURP and another have had their funding zeroed out completely.
McClain says that what's especially striking about this "is that within the FY13 NOAA Budget, the Office of Ocean
Exploration [the division that contains NURP] took the second biggest cut of all programs (-16.5%). Sadly, the biggest
cut came to education programs (-55.1%)." With any luck, Cameron's efforts will go a long way in piquing public
interest in deep sea research. (We know, for example, that Pandora's oceans will feature prominently in the Avatar
sequel, and that Cameron has even toyed with the idea of filming parts of the movie in the Marianas Trench.) Doug
Bartlett, a marine microbiologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Cameron's chief scientist
for the dive, thinks that the mission will help get kids "dreaming of the possibility
of going into engineering and oceanography and all sorts of science fields." But
Cameron says that reversing the decline of deep sea research will take more than
his expedition, alone.
K2: Mapping
Increase in funding is key to ocean mapping
Adams(Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Florida and a Master of Arts in
Environmental Studies from Brown University)March 25, 2014(Alexandra, “A Blue Budget Beyond
Sequester: Taking care of our oceans”, Switch Board,
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aadams/a_blue_budget_beyond_sequester.html)
Unfortunately, some critical programs won’t get what they need this year. This
year’s budget cuts funding for Ocean Exploration and Research by $7 million. This
funding has supported exploration by the research vessel Okeanos of deep sea
corals and other marine life in the submarine canyons and seamounts off the MidAtlantic and New England coasts that fisheries managers and ocean conservation
groups, including NRDC, are working to protect. Even though funds are stretched,
shortchanging exploration and research will lead to weaker protections for species
and resources that are already under stress. While we often think about all of the
cutting edge science and data NOAA provides us, we often forget that it takes
experts and assets to bring us those benefits. To address this, the budget includes an increase for
NOAA’s corporate functions and agency management. From forecasting the days’ weather, to protecting our nation’s
fish stocks and helping vulnerable areas prepare for climate change, NOAA can only provide us these services if it has
the capacity and support it needs to fulfill its vital missions. The news is largely better for NOAA programs after
damaging sequester cuts, though we are still not nearly where we need to be to ensure the best outcomes for our
marine resources. Congress now has the opportunity to fund NOAA under the President’s Budget to bring us closer to
retaining the benefit of plentiful fisheries, cutting edge science to help us adapt to climate change, environmental
intelligence to help ensure healthy oceans and many other critical services. After the damaging impacts
of sequester, it’s time to find our way to a budget that can support all we demand
from our oceans, while protecting them for future generations.
AT: NOAA Bad
Ocean exploration 2020 conference disproves all of their claims about
NOAA
Edwards, 13 (Andrew, Press-Telegram staff writer, “Aquarium of the Pacific forum produces new
report to guide ocean exploration,” http://www.presstelegram.com/science/20130925/aquarium-of-thepacific-forum-produces-new-report-to-guide-ocean-exploration, 9/25/13, AW)
Marine explorers and scientists who gathered this past summer at Aquarium of the
Pacific published a report Wednesday outlining imperatives to explore polar waters,
to study ocean acidification and to develop a national policy to guide ocean
exploration. “A strong commitment to ocean exploration and research is an
opportunity, an urgent necessity, and an issue of national security,” the report states.
“Every ocean exploration expedition yields new data and information, often new species, and sometimes
entirely new ecosystems.” The report is the outcome of the Ocean Exploration 2020
Conference that took place in July at the Aquarium of the Pacific. More than 110 experts
attended the meeting. The meeting was the “first time the community came together to
tell the federal government that this is what needs to happen,” said Jerry Schubel,
Aquarium of the Pacific president. Only 5 to 10 percent of the planet’s oceans have been explored,
according to the report. The document outlines several priorities that those who
attended the July meeting chose as the best means to explore more of the ocean .
They include the increased exploration of Arctic and Antarctic waters, studying ocean
acidification, developing at least one dedicated federal vessel for ocean
exploration, encouraging the cooperation between governmental and private
entities interested in ocean exploration and focusing on autonomous vehicles —
not requiring human occupants — to explore the world beneath the waves. Essays
included in the report, respectively authored by Marcia McNutt, editor in chief of Science, and retired
Navy Admiral Paul G. Gaffney note that increased study of the polar regions could provide new knowledge
relevant to the understanding of climate issues and submarine operations. Federal law requires the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Commerce Department, to
develop a national ocean exploration program. July’s meeting at the aquarium was
part of that process. “We’re pretty excited about the results,” said David McKinnie,
NOAA’s senior advisor for its Office of Exploration and Research, calling the report a road map to
guide future research. The report also called for acceptance of the work of citizen
explorers, a broad classification that McKinnie said could range from the likes of filmmaker James
Cameron to less famous people with the interest and capability to build technology to observe the
underwater world.
The Squo
No Exploration Now – Generic
NOAA is supposed to do ocean research
CCST (Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation) October 11, 2004 (House Bill,
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-108srpt400/html/CRPT-108srpt400.htm)
The purpose of S. 2280, the National Ocean Exploration Program Act, is to
establish a national ocean exploration program within NOAA and authorize
appropriations for the program for fiscal years 2005 through 2016. The program's
main purpose would be to explore the oceans to ``benefit, inform, and inspire'' the
American people, while facilitating the discovery of new living and non-living resources, documenting
shipwrecks and submerged archaeological sites, and encouraging the growth of new technologies. The bill would also
establish an interagency task force to coordinate Federal and non- government cooperation. Background and Needs
Ocean exploration has encompassed charting ocean depth and bathymetry and
identifying and studying marine organisms. Although ocean exploration has
occurred since the 1800s, only 5 percent of the ocean floor has been explored to
date and scientific understanding of undersea environments remains cursory.
Current ocean exploration excursions continue to probe uncharted territory and
locate and identify new species and resources, ranging from hydrothermal vents and deep sea
corals to shipwrecks and other cultural artifacts. The potential for identifying new and profitable energy sources and
biomedical resources in the oceans is significant, but it remains largely untapped. Progress has generally been limited
due to the Federal government's narrow focus and limited financial and other support for ocean exploration. For
decades, the ocean science, research, and education communities have called for
strengthening Federal ocean exploration programs and priorities in order to fill
critical scientific knowledge gaps, develop potential economic resources, and
inspire greater ocean literacy among the general public. The U.S. Commission on
Ocean Policy's (the Ocean Commission) final report to Congress, released on
September 20, 2004, reiterated these needs. Within its report, the Ocean
Commission highlighted the need for a strong, comprehensive ocean exploration
program, citing the persistent call for a national program from various
commissions and expert panels since the 1970s.
Ocean is being ignored in favour of space
Mangu-Ward(managing editor of Reason magazine and a Future Tense fellow at the New America
Foundation) September 4, 2013(Katherine, “Is the Ocean the Real Final Frontier?”, Slate,
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/09/sea_vs_space_which_is_the_real_fin
al_frontier.html)
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of our exploring shall be to return where we started and know the
place for the first time That tidbit of T.S. Eliot is stolen from Graham Hawkes, a submarine designer who really, really
loves the ocean. Hawkes is famous for hollering, “Your rockets are pointed in the wrong goddamn direction!” at
anyone who suggests that space is the Final Frontier. The deep sea, he contends, is where we
should be headed: The unexplored oceans hold mysteries more compelling,
environments more challenging, and life-forms more bizarre than anything the
vacuum of space has to offer. Plus, it’s cheaper to go down than up. (You can watch his
appealingly arrogant TED talk on the subject here. Is Hawkes right? Should we all be crawling
back into the seas from which we came? Ocean exploration is certainly the
underdog, so to speak, in the sea vs. space face-off. There’s no doubt that the
general public considers space the sexier realm. The occasional James Cameron
joint aside, there’s much more cultural celebration of space travel, exploration,
and colonization than there is of equivalent underwater adventures. In a celebrity
death match between Captain Kirk and Jacques Cousteau, Kirk is going to kick
butt every time. In fact, the rivalry can feel a bit lopsided—the chess club may consider the
football program a competitor for funds and attention, but the jocks aren’t losing much sleep over the price of pawns
and cheerleaders rarely turn out for chess tournaments. But somehow the debate rages on in dorm
rooms, congressional committee rooms, and Internet chat rooms.
No Funding for NOAA – Generic
NOAA lacks funding now—cuts have grown exponentially
Woglom 13 (Emily Woglom is Vice President, Conservation Policy and Programs, for Ocean Conservancy. Ocean Conservancy
”Three Questions to Ask About NOAA’s Funding” http://blog.oceanconservancy.org/2013/07/09/three-questions-to-ask-aboutnoaas-funding/ Jul 9 2013)
This week in Congress, the
House of Representatives will put forth a bill to fund the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the 2014 fiscal year. We saw
earlier this year that President Obama’s 2014 budget for NOAA would provide a
bright future for our ocean, but the funding bill in the House paints a much
grimmer picture. How will you know whether the bill will support a healthy ocean?
Here are three questions to ask: 1. NOAA’s topline budget: does it cover the costs? Despite being one of the most
important agencies to our ocean, NOAA has faced significant funding cuts in
recent years, and it is likely that the House will attempt to steeply cut NOAA’s
budget again this year. With the sequestration, NOAA’s budget is already hovering
at 13 percent below the current request for $5.4 billion. This bill could demand
even lower numbers. NOAA’s mission of protecting, restoring and managing our ocean and coasts is vitally important
to our ocean and coastal economies, which contribute more than $258 billion annually to the nation’s gross domestic product and
support 2.7 million jobs through fisheries and seafood production, tourism, recreation, transportation and construction. Adequate
funding for NOAA is critically important to the health of our nation’s ocean and coasts, and the economies and communities that
depend on them. Cutting
resources will cost us—now and in the future. 2. Is there balance between
NOAA’s wet and dry missions? NOAA has been tasked with a broad range of duties, from the
National Weather Service and weather satellite programs (dry side) to the
National Ocean Service and ocean and coastal programs (wet side). Congress must
maintain balanced investments across NOAA’s missions. Americans shouldn’t
have to choose between weather satellites and ocean and coastal resources that
support and protect our coastal economies and communities. We simply need
both. One example of the importance of NOAA’s “wet side” programs is the role they play in disaster preparedness and
mitigation. Coastal wetland buffer zones in the United States are estimated to provide $23.2 billion per year in storm protection, and
a single acre of wetland can store 1 to 1.5 million gallons of floodwaters or storm surge. In addition, ocean and coastal observations
and monitoring supports severe storm tracking and weather forecasting systems, which greatly reduce the cost of natural disaster
preparation, evacuation and mitigation. We know that disasters, both natural and man-made, will strike our shores again. Let’s
ensure we’re better prepared. 3. Does the bill attack the National Ocean Policy? In past years, attempts have been made to use
NOAA’s funding bill to attack the National Ocean Policy. The policy is about balance, good governance and ensuring long-term
sustainability for our ocean economy and ocean environment. Without creating new regulations, the National Ocean Policy calls for
federal agencies to coordinate their ocean activities and leverage limited resources to more efficiently carry out activities like
mapping and monitoring. Attacks on the National Ocean Policy risk ongoing conflict and uncertainty for our nation’s ocean and
coasts. In addition, because the National Ocean Policy focuses on coordinating existing laws and services, there is a risk that attacks
on it could affect programs that communities currently rely on. This could even harm plans critical to Superstorm Sandy recovery
and restoration efforts in places like the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay. Investing in our ocean will benefit coastal
ecosystems and the economies they support. If we
shortchange NOAA, we shortchange the
communities that rely on the ocean. Congress must ensure that the funding levels
match the importance of NOAA’s tasks at hand.
NOAA Research and Exploration department is only given 23.7 million a
year
Conathan( Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress)5/18/2013(Michael, “Rockets Top Submarines:
Space Exploration Dollars Dwarf Ocean Spending”, Center for American Progress,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2013/06/18/66956/rockets-top-submarinesspace-exploration-dollars-dwarf-ocean-spending/)
Hollywood giant James Cameron, director of mega-blockbusters such as “Titanic” and “Avatar,” brought this message
to Capitol Hill last week, along with the single-seat submersible that he used to become the third human to journey to
the deepest point of the world’s oceans—the Marianas Trench. By contrast, more
than 500 people have
journeyed into space—including Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who sits on the
committee before which Cameron testified—and 12 people have actually set foot on
the surface of the moon. All it takes is a quick comparison of the budgets for NASA
and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to
understand why space exploration is outpacing its ocean counterpart by such a
wide margin. In fiscal year 2013 NASA’s annual exploration budget was roughly
$3.8 billion. That same year, total funding for everything NOAA does—fishery management, weather and climate
forecasting, ocean research and management, among many other programs—was about $5 billion, and NOAA’s
Office of Exploration and Research received just $23.7 million. Something is
wrong with this picture. Space travel is certainly expensive. But as Cameron
proved with his dive that cost approximately $8 million, deep-sea exploration is
pricey as well. And that’s not the only similarity between space and ocean travel:
Both are dark, cold, and completely inhospitable to human life.
No Funding – Climate Specific
Specifically—significant cuts for climate change research
Valentine 3/29 (Katie Valentine is a reporter for Climate Progress. Previously, she interned with
American Progress in the Energy department, doing research on international climate policy and
contributing to Climate Progress. Katie graduated from the University of Georgia in 2012 with a bachelor
of arts in journalism and a minor in ecology. While in school, she wrote for UGA’s student newspaper, The
Red & Black, and was a contributing editor for UGAzine. She also interned at Creative Loafing, Points
North, and in UGA’s Office of Sustainability. “One House Republican’s Latest Plan To Undermine Climate
Research” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/29/3420703/noaa-bill-more-weather-research/
Mar 29 2014)
After years of attempts at cutting the agency’s funding, House Republicans want
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to focus more on
predicting storms and less on studying climate change. The House is set to vote next week
on a bill that would force NOAA to prioritize its forecasting over its climate research. The bill, introduced
last June by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), wouldn’t require NOAA to stop its climate research, but it
would require the agency to “prioritize weather-related activities, including the
provision of improved weather data, forecasts, and warnings for the protection of
life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.” Among other things, it
would direct the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA’s research and development arm
which studies weather, climate and other environmental forces, to create new weather programs,
including one focused on tornado warnings. Bridenstine, whose home state of Oklahoma was ravaged by
severe tornadoes last year, said that the bill’s intent was to “protect lives and property by shifting funds
from climate change research to severe weather forecasting research.” But though scientists are
still trying to determine what, if any, impact climate change has on tornadoes,
science has shown that climate change is a driver of other forms of extreme
weather. Bridenstine is also a known climate denier who last year asked President Obama to apologize
to Oklahoma for investing in climate change research. “We know that Oklahoma will have tornadoes when
the cold jet stream meets the warm Gulf air, and we also know that this President spends 30 times as
much money on global warming research as he does on weather forecasting and warning,” he said.
Congress has tried to influence what NOAA spends its time and money on in the past, but it hasn’t always
been in line with a pro-weather research agenda. In 2011, a House-passed bill cut funding for
NOAA satellite programs, which play a key role in weather forecasting, and in
2012, Republican lawmakers proposed further cuts to the satellite program. NOAA
was also hit by last summer’s across-the-board sequester cuts, which forced NOAA
to furlough employees so it could keep its weather forecasting and satellite
operations intact. Already, NOAA spends more on weather forecasting than it does
on climate research. In 2013, NOAA spent about $742 million on local weather
warnings and forecasts, compared to the $108 million it spent on ocean, coastal
and Great Lakes research and $176 million it spent on climate research. And though the
link between climate change and severe weather has grown clearer, NOAA has called for more research into the potential link
between climate change and tornadoes, which is not as well understood.
NOAA Funding Requests
NOAA funding requests an increase of at least 12 million for climate
observations and mapping.
NOAA 2014 (FY 2014 budget summary,
http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/nbo/fy14_bluebook/FINALnoaaBlueBook_2014_Web_Full.pdf)
Ocean Coastal and Great Lakes Research Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes: NOAA
requests an
increase of $1,505,000 and 0 FTE to fund grant opportunities for Cooperative
Institutes to identify new methods of addressing scientific questions that define
NOAA’s mission goals in ocean, coasts, weather, and climate. Ocean research and
observation systems are the basis for predictions of: economically important
global climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña; measurements of the
health of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and fisheries; understanding
the oceanic components of weather; and detecting and understanding other
coastal hazards such as tsunamis. The economic benefit of the research and
forecasts from ocean systems is well founded, but the current methods of
maintaining these systems and observations (which are critical input for the forecasts) are
becoming more costly due to growing fuel and port fees, and increasing
maintenance expenses of the aging NOAA fleet. These factors are contributing to a decline in
NOAA’s ability to support the Agency’s ocean-related man- dates. The amount of information collected per ship day
could be increased significantly through the development of a more economical operational model that uses a
portfolio of observational platforms. This funding will provide grant opportunities to NOAA
Cooperative Institutes to help NOAA integrate sensor suites, optimize
configuration of ocean observing platforms, and identify candidate technologies to
enhance the cost-effectiveness of the NOAA fleet. Projects will focus on the
development and use of these technologies to help replace capabilities that are
currently only considered for shipboard operations. National Sea Grant College Program:
NOAA requests an increase of $9,711,000 and a decrease of 2 FTE. Highlights include: National Sea Grant College
Program: NOAA requests an increase of $4,495,000 and an increase of 0 FTE to support competitive research
focused on developing more resilient coastal communities and sustaining diverse and vibrant economies. Coastal
communities in the United States provide vital economic, social, and recreational opportunities for millions of
Americans. At the same time, coastal communities are more vulnerable than ever to natural and technological
hazards. This funding increase will sup- port coastal resilience research projects at state, regional, and national levels
through a competitively-awarded grants process to sea grant colleges and universities. Specific areas of competitive
research will include: marine-related energy sources and efficiency; wise use of water resources; climate change
adaptation; coastal processes studies; resilience from natural hazards; technology development; and resilient coastal
businesses and industries, including fisheries and tourism. In addition to helping our coastal communities and economies become more resilient, this funding will also help create and retain private sector jobs National Sea Grant
College Program: Grand Challenge: NOAA requests an increase of $10,000,000 and 1 FTE to
sponsor a Grand Challenge in the field of ocean map- ping and observing. NOAA
requests funding for an ocean “Grand Challenge” as part of President Obama’s
Strategy for American Innovation. NOAA is launching this challenge as a way to
focus innovative thinkers on exploration, mapping, and observing needs that
would further NOAA’s missions. The challenge model enables NOAA to leverage
funds in order to spur even greater investments from the academic community
and industry. New technologies in these fields that modernize our at-sea research,
monitoring, and application methods will help NOAA accomplish its mission more
cost effectively in the future. The Grand Challenge initiative will also foster science
and technological innovation that will increase the rate of discovering and
mapping new energy sources, seafloor features, spe- cies, ecosystems, artifacts,
and resources that may lead to new types of pharmaceuticals. Increasing the rate
at which NOAA can collect these ocean observations will also improve
understanding of the role oceans play in our weather and climate.
NOAA request another 10 million for research
NOAA 2014 (FY 2014 budget summary,
http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/nbo/fy14_bluebook/FINALnoaaBlueBook_2014_Web_Full.pdf)
Ocean Exploration Program: NOAA
requests an increase of $10,070,000 and 4 FTE to
continue NOAA’s mission to map and explore the extended continental shelf.
Ocean Exploration provides a critical baseline of knowledge which serves to
catalyze new lines of research and scientific inquiry, support ocean resource
management decisions, and improve ocean literacy and stewardship. Areas
beyond 200 nautical miles of U.S. coastlines have been the focus of high-resolution
bathymetric mapping and seismic reflection profiling over the past several years,
in ongoing efforts to define the limits of the U.S. extended continental shelf (ECS)
in accordance with international law. These efforts have already led to scientific
discoveries, such as the existence of previously unknown seamounts in the Arctic
Ocean, and never before seen mega-plumes of gas from major vent fields off the
U.S. West Coast. This funding increase will provide grants and other extramural
funding for ocean exploration including assessing unknown and poorly known
ocean areas, locat- ing important submerged cultural resources such as shipwrecks, developing advanced
undersea technologies, and conducting exploration to support U.S. claims to our ECS. This funding will enable NOAA
to perform ECS mapping expeditions and expand Ocean Exploration’s telepresence-enabled program conducted with
partners using the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer and Exploration Vessel Nautilus.
NOAA wants at least 10 million for mapping
NOAA 2014 (FY 2014 budget summary,
http://www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/nbo/fy14_bluebook/FINALnoaaBlueBook_2014_Web_Full.pdf)
Navigation, Observations & Positioning: Accelerate Processing of Hydrographic Survey Data. NOAA
requests
an increase of $1,710,000 and 0 FTE for mapping and charting activities that will
improve the accuracy of nautical charts for safe navigation and deliver mapping data for coastal
hazards and resilience decision-support. NOAA’s map- ping and charting activities enable safe
navigation in U.S. territorial waters and the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, a
combined area of 3.4 million square nautical miles extending 200 nautical miles
offshore from the Nation’s coastline. This increase will support both navigation
and non-navigation requirements (such as living marine resource, habitat
conservation, and post-storm event marine debris identification), and will enable
NOAA to increase the number of surveys evaluated, validated and applied to
nautical charts by 20 percent over existing production levels. Navigation, Observations &
Positioning: Coastal LIDAR Data Collection and Coordination. NOAA requests an increase of
$7,993,000 and 2 FTEs to participate in an integrated, government-wide LIDAR
(light detection and ranging) data col- lection effort in high priority coastal
regions. With this increase, NOAA will work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Geological Survey
through the 3D Elevation Program, the Interagency Committee on Ocean and Coastal Mapping and the Interagency
National Digital Elevation Program, to streamline Federal LIDAR data acquisition activities,
improve LIDAR data collection methods, ensure that all data meet shared
standards reflecting application and integration requirements, support
cooperative development of data collection, processing, and delivery capabilities
across the community of practice, and substantially increase the quantity and
quality of data collected and processed to meet a broad range of integrated ocean
and LIDAR data is often collected by air, such as with this NOAA survey aircraft (top) over Bixby Bridge in Big
Sur, California. Here, LIDAR data reveals a top-down (bottom left) and profile view of Bixby Bridge. LIDAR data
supports activities such as inundation and storm surge modeling, hydrodynamic
modeling, shoreline mapping, emergency response, hydrographic surveying, and
coastal vulnerability analysis. coastal mapping applications. NOAA currently uses
shoreline data primarily for nautical charting and aids to navigation. Resources provided
would focus on addressing priority data gaps and newly arising needs as identified through stakeholder engagement
with regional ocean alliances and coastal zone resource and emergency management agen- cies at the State, Tribal,
and Federal levels. In addition, this increase will allow for broader LIDAR data collection concurrent with aerial
imagery and vastly improve coordination across agencies through shared products, standards and protocols.
Misc.
NOAA Exploration Includes Mapping
NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer is mapping
Meyers 12 (Meredith Meyers. NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer Student Mapping Intern. McDaniel College. “Ocean Floor Mapping
from the Perspective of an Intern and an Interview with a Marine Ecologist”
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/acumen12/1204_interview/welcome.html)
It is often said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we know about the surface of the seafloor.
After
serving as an intern aboard the Okeanos Explorer during the ship’s second cruise
as part of the Atlantic Canyons Undersea Mapping Expeditions project, it is hard to
argue with this comparison. It is impossible to grasp the sheer expanse of the oceans until you have spent time on
the water, far away from shore. As a recent college graduate with a degree in environmental biology, I pictured this internship as the
perfect opportunity to expand my field skills. With a degree in biology and hopes of pursuing marine biology and policy in graduate
school, I was eager to acquire experience in the field of oceanography. Through
the use of multibeam sonar
technology and the accompanying backscatter data, we are able to create images
detailing the topography of the seafloor. The priority areas being surveyed for this
expedition are deep water canyons that lie along the continental shelf, from the
Mid-Atlantic states to as far north as Massachusetts. An Interview with David Packer Ocean
exploration holds the key to our ability to better understand and manage issues such as climate change, natural resource use,
geological processes, and marine species conservation. Being a biologist, I am interested in how the data we collect during this
expedition can be applied to species conservation and the development of marine policy. Lucky for me, a member of the science
team, David Packer, is using the data in order to identify deep-sea coral habitat. He hopes that the identification of prime coral
habitat will expedite plans for legislation in order to protect these areas and ensure healthy coral populations in years to come. It is
known that deep-sea corals prefer hard substrate and deep depths, so Packer predicts that the deep-water canyons we are surveying
would serve as prime habitat. I sat down with Packer in order to better understand his mission for this expedition. Question 1: As a
marine ecologist, which agency do you work for, and what is its purpose? Answer: I work for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries
Service, Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). The agency manages the nation’s federal marine fish stocks and their habitats.
The Northeast Fisheries Science Center is essentially the northeast and mid-Atlantic’s research arm of the National Marine Fisheries
Service – we have six laboratories in the region. Question 2: How did you obtain your position at NEFSC? Does the job reflect what
you studied during your academic career? Answer: I received my undergraduate degree in zoology from Ohio State University.
Before graduate school, I held many part-time jobs with the federal government. For instance, I volunteered and worked for the
National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. I also volunteered at the Smithsonian Institution’s Marine Systems
Laboratory. The latter helped me to get into graduate school at the University of Maine where I received my Masters degree in
oceanography. After grad school, I was an intern with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program in
Annapolis, Maryland. While I was interning, I applied for and received a full-time position at NEFSC’s James J. Howard Marine
Sciences Laboratory in Highlands, New Jersey, as a marine ecologist. And the rest is history. Question 3: Did you have any ocean
floor mapping experience, or experience using multibeam sonar, before this cruise? Answer: I never had true hands-on experience
with this type of sonar technology in the field. However, I took a marine geography course in graduate school, and I had experience
working with geologists before and during graduate school. Essentially, I understood the concept and the lingo, but had never
experimented with the actual technology. Question 4: How did you become involved with this Okeanos Explorer expedition?
Answer: My colleague at the Smithsonian Institution, Martha Nizinski, and I are currently working on deep-sea coral research off
the northeastern United States. Several months before this cruise we
started having discussions with
Jeremy Potter from the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, and the
expedition manager for this cruise, about collaborating and doing opportunistic
mapping surveys using the Okeanos Explorer. The focus would be in mapping the submarine canyons on
the edge of the continental shelf and slope. Deep-sea corals are found in many of these canyons, but we know very little about their
habitats, or even if they’re present or how many there are. The
first step is to get accurate bathymetric
maps, so we gave Potter and his colleagues our priority areas for mapping. But first, in order to learn more
about their program, Potter invited me to visit the University of Rhode Island’s
Inner Space Center, where I got a good introduction as to how Okeanos Explorer
operates and the technology involved. I then volunteered to go on one of the Okeanos cruises, and was
assigned to participate in this expedition, where many of our priority canyon areas were set to be surveyed.
AT: CP’s
USFG k2 cooperation/partnerships
Strong federal influence key to coordination of public-private partnerships
in ocean exploration
McNutt, 13 (Marcia, PhD, Executive Chief of the Ocean Exploration 2020 Forum, “Partnerships,” in
The Report of Ocean Exploration 2020: A National Forum, July 19-21, 2013,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf, AW)
Each individual and each institution brings experience, expertise, and creativity to
the table. Partnerships that bring together individuals and institutions that span
multiple interfaces among different sectors enhance the potential for significant new
advances in discovery, understanding, wisdom, and action. In a time of shrinking federal
resources, if there is to be an effective national program of exploration, it will be accomplished through
partnerships. There was a strong consensus—near unanimity—that in 2020 and
beyond, most ocean exploration expeditions and programs will be partnerships—
public and private, national and international. NOAA has been assigned a
leadership role in developing and sustaining a national program of ocean
exploration under the Ocean Exploration Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-11). The act
mandated that NOAA undertake this responsibility in collaboration with other
federal agencies. Ocean Exploration 2020 invitees felt that federal and academic programs
should be more assertive in seeking partnerships with ocean industries. It was,
however, acknowledged that the necessity of sharing data might pose a challenge for some industry
partners as well as federal agencies with restricted missions, like the Navy’s Office of Naval Research .
There was a strong feeling that the community of ocean explorers needs to be
more inclusive and more nimble, two sometimes conflicting qualities. Nimbleness
will require more non-governmental sources of support and a small, dedicated,
dynamic decision-making group that represents the interests of the ocean
exploration community and that commands their trust. A coherent,
comprehensive national program of ocean exploration requires sustained core
support at some predictable level from the federal government and demonstrated
coordination among the federal agencies involved in ocean exploration, in order to
leverage involvement of business, industry, foundations, and NGOs. Timely and
effective communication among partners is necessary to build and sustain the expanded community of
ocean explorers.
AT: K’s
Public Engagement
Ocean exploration key to public engagement – highest imperative to inspire
emotional connection for environmental protection
Lang, 13 (David, Co-founder of OpenROV – a DIY community and product line focused on open source
undersea exploration, and author of Zero to Maker, “From Exploration to Engagement,” in The Report of
Ocean Exploration 2020: A National Forum, July 19-21, 2013,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf, AW)
The solutions to the challenging issues facing our oceans—global warming, acidification, over-fishing—
require the right combination of strong science, informed policy, and skilled engineering. However, there
is one challenge (indeed, the grandest ocean challenge) that doesn’t fit that formula: public engagement.
Solving the ocean challenges require an engaged and supportive public. A public
that understands what is at stake, and can draw a clear connection between ocean
health and the health of their families and communities. Unfortunately, the same tactics
needed to address the pressing ocean issues also work to cognitively erase that public connection with the
ocean. The immensity of the ocean and its corresponding challenges create a willful
blindness among the public—it’s just too overwhelming to comprehend, so people
stop trying. The most effective way to build an engaged and informed public is just
the opposite. Instead of highlighting the problems, we need now more than ever to
use a positive approach to show what’s wonderful about our oceans. We need to
strengthen the public connection through positive association. From a postive perspective,
there’s no better tactic than ocean exploration . It taps into everything that’s aweinspiring about the ocean: its vastness, its mystery, its wonder. But it also taps into
everything that’s awe-inspiring about our humanity: our curiosity, our ingenuity,
our wonder. Public engagement is the highest imperative—every other issue is
derivative. People will only protect and pursue something in their field of
awareness. We need a direct emotional connection. Ocean exploration gives us the
power to tell that story.
Exploration improves ocean literacy
NOAA 13 (“What Is Ocean Exploration and Why Is It Important? We have explored about five percent of Earth’s ocean. “What
does that mean?” “Who cares?” “What difference does it make?” “So what?””
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/backmatter/whatisexploration.html National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Jan 7 2013)
Ocean exploration is about making new discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected.Although it involves the
ocean exploration is disciplined and systematic. It includes
rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical,
geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean. Findings made through ocean
exploration expand our fundamental scientific knowledge and understanding,
helping to lay the foundation for more detailed, hypothesis-based scientific
investigations. While new discoveries are always exciting to scientists, information from ocean
exploration is important to everyone. Unlocking the mysteries of deep-sea
ecosystems can reveal new sources for medical drugs, food, energy resources, and
other products. Information from deep-ocean exploration can help predict earthquakes and
tsunamis and help us understand how we are affecting and being affected by
changes in Earth’s climate and atmosphere. Expeditions to the unexplored ocean
can help focus research into critical geographic and subject areas that are likely to
produce tangible benefits. Ocean exploration can improve ocean literacy and
inspire new generations of youth to seek careers in science, technology,
search for things yet unknown,
engineering, and mathematics. The challenges of exploring the deep ocean can provide the basis for problemsolving instruction in technology and engineering that can be applied in other situations. Exploration leaves a legacy of new
knowledge that can be used by those not yet born to answer questions not yet posed at the time of exploration.The Ocean Explorer
website chronicles ocean explorations co-funded by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, explains the tools and
technology used during these explorations, and provides opportunities for people of all ages to expand their understanding of the
ocean environment. Scientists, policy makers, and others interested in learning more about the “business” behind the science
presented on this site are encouraged to visit the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research website.
Exploration/Science = Good
Their claims of science being coopted are overblown – all forms of thought
involve some extent of political relevance – must look at the tangible reality
of our truth claims
Haack, 03 (Susan, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Miami, “Defending Science – Within Reason,” http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~principi/p323.PDF, AW)
We have arrived, in short, at the New Cynicism Now it is commonplace to hear that science is
largely or wholly a matter of social interests, of negonation, or of mythmaking, the
production of inscriptions, narrative, that appeals to "fact" or "evidence" or
"rationality" are nothing but ideological humbug disusing the exclusion of this or
that oppressed group The natural world, Harry Collins wntes, "has a small or non-existent role in
the construction of scientific knowledge",3 the validity of theoretical propositions in the sciences, Kenneth
Gergen assures us, "is in no way affected by factual evidence "4 According to this new orthodoxy,
not only does science have no peculiar epistemic authority and no uniquely
rational method, it is really, like all purported "inquiry," just politics "Femmist science," Ruth
Hubbard writes, "must insist on the political nature and content of scientific work” "I don't see any
difference," Steve Fuller announces, "between `good scholarship' and 'political
relevance ' Both will vary, depending on who[m] you are trying to court in your
work " 6 "The only sense in which science is exemplary," Richard Rorty tells us, "is that it
is a model of human solidarity "7 It isn't enough just to protest that this is
ridiculous, it isn't enough, even, to show, in however much detail, that what the New
Cynics offer in place of evidence or argument for their startling claims is an
incoherent farrago of confusion, non sequitur, and rhetoric An adequate defense
against the extravagances of the New Cyniasm requires an adequate account of the
epistemology of science — a realistic account, in the sense explained earlier
Intrinsic knowledge is good
ROZWADOWSKI 10 ( HELEN M. ROZWADOWSKI,
Environmental History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (JULY 2010),
pp. 520-525. “Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25764467)
Tracklessness, opacity and vast scale are physical aspects of the ocean that are
identified, to some degree, relative to human senses and scale. Especially based on my recent
research into undersea exploration of the 1950s and 1960s, I have begun to understand that-for historians at least-consideration of extreme
environments requires the context of human bodies (including their absence). One
characteristic of the depths relative to land, which is
that voyagers leave no tracks in the water (although they can, and do, leave
traces in the sea). This quality strongly shapes perception of the ocean and presents a
challenge to efforts to tell ocean history. To a voyager gazing at the horizon, the sea
appears the same at that moment as at all times in the past. Sailors often feel an
affinity with each other and with sailors of past times. Storms likewise evoke
universal reactions among mari ners (and sometimes nonmariners): terror,
despair, and relief at their end. The sense of constancy conveys an impression of
the sea as an a historic place. Literature contributes to the idea of the ocean as apart from history. This perception is deeply and
also shared by the sea's surface, is
widely held, including by many historians, who treat the sea as a backdrop for human activities rather than as a place susceptible to, and involved in,
historical change. Just
as the ocean seems outside history, it also seems unimaginably
enormous relative to human scale. The sea's opacity forces the use of indirect
methods to gain knowledge of its depths, such as deploying sounding gear or
fishing nets to find the bottom contour or sample marine life. The vastness, in all three
dimensions, impedes meaningful scientific knowledge based on direct, personal
experience and demands, instead, systematic sampling using standardized
instruments across large parts of the sea. Both the ocean's scale and its opacity mean
that knowledge of the sea is mediated by technology and knowledge systems. These
include the gear and knowledge of fishermen, navigators and others who work at sea as
well as the tools and understanding of modern science. Indeed, our knowledge of the ocean is so
dependent on technology and knowledge systems that these can be understood as, to some extent, constituting the ocean.3 As central as
technology was, and remains, for knowing the ocean, motive is the critical
precursor to technology. Cultural notions and political and economic intentions
for using the ocean spurred efforts to probe the depths. In the mid nineteenth century, expectations for a
transatlantic submarine telegraph cable exerted a powerful influence on the interpretation of soundings along the proposed track of the cable. The
resulting image of the sea floor as a plateau of mod erate depths, perfectly suited for submarine telegraphy, diverged from previous understanding of
the ocean bottom as rugged and forbidding and, within two decades, gave way to the discovery of a major mid-ocean mountain chain. In the 1960s,
promoters of ocean exploration described the sea as a "frontier" to evoke the wealth of living and non-living resources they believed possible to extract.
Perhaps the most striking evidence that culture-in the form of motive or desirematters as much or more than technology comes with the recognition that the
ability to reach great depths did not guarantee continued efforts to do so. After the
bathyscaphe Trieste reached the bottom of the Marianas Trench at the Challenger Deep, the deepest point of the ocean, in i960, no further efforts were
made to revisit the deepest sea floor areas for over three decades. The
categories of imagination and desire are
critical for the ocean.4 It may seem to some observers that actual human bodies
were no longer relevant for the deep ocean by the mid- to late-twentieth century.
Strikingly unlike experimental rocket tests, for which unmanned shots preceded manned missions, the Trieste's first and only dive to the Challenger
Deep was manned. When
exploration of the spot resumed in 1995, it was by robot. Despite
the scientists and explorers who continue today to insist on the need for human
presence underwater, the debate is largely over. Remotely operated vehicles and, increasingly, autonomous underwater vehicles,
appear to be the technology of choice for today's exploration of the great depths and much of the sea floor. That does not, however,
mean that historians should cease considering the ocean, even the depths, in
terms of human physiology. While scientists define the ocean by fixed categories
such as shelf, slope, and abyss, historians must, I believe, define zones of the sea
differently-more fluidly, less geographically and, most of all, in ways that reflect
the activities and desires of historical actors. In the mid-nineteenth century, for example, the
functional depth of the "deep ocean" changed over time and depending on who
defined it. Hydrographers at the start of the century considered any depth beyond their 200-fathom sounding lines (1,200 feet) as deep, while
dredgers defined the category in relation to the vessels and gear they used to collect samples. People interested in the
underwater realm in the 1950s and 1960s likewise defined "undersea" differently
over time, always in reference to human ability to survive in an environment
otherwise hostile to humans. Generally speaking, the first thirty-three feet (to 1 atmosphere of pressure) underwater is the zone
where ordinary people, both free divers and those using conventional scuba gear, are most comfortable, although beginning recreational diver training
now extends to 120 feet. But human limits in the sea can change with technology. Adjustments to the mix of breathing gases can extend depth range,
while the use of gear such as slides and lift assists can enable breath-holding free divers to achieve record depths of over 650 feet. Properly trained and
outfitted technical divers can operate to 180 feet; record dives with scuba gear have dipped below 980 feet. Time spent at depth need not be short.
Experiments with saturation diving have demonstrated that humans can live at depths of 200 feet for 30 days, 328 feet for 22 days, and 980 feet for 14
days.5 In
short, parts of the ocean (defined by the intersection of human physiology
and tech nology) can be viewed as an accessible environment.
Science is not authoritative – its encouragement of investigation and
epistemic inquiry prevent it
Haack, 03 (Susan, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Miami, “Defending Science – Within Reason,” http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~principi/p323.PDF, AW)
One might almost say that as the Old Deferentiahsm, once itself a rebellion against an older orthodoxy,
became an orthodoxy itself, and as the hard-earned distinction of the natural sciences was allowed to
congeal into uncriticized privilege, the exaggerated response of the new rebels was only to be expected But
the exaggerated response is as unnecessary as the supposed epistemic privilege of science is indefensible
Our standards of good, strong, supportive evidence and of well-conducted, honest,
thorough, imaginative inquiry are not internal to the sciences In judging where
science has succeeded and where it has failed, in what areas and at what times it has done
better and in what worse, we are appealing to the standards by which we judge the
solidity of empirical beliefs, or the rigor and thoroughness of empirical inquiry, generally But
the sciences, at least some of them at least some of the time, have succeeded
remarkably well by those standards. To say that standards of good evidence and
well-conducted inquiry are not internal to the sciences is not to say that a lay
person is able to judge the evidence for a scientific claim or the conduct of a
scientific inquiry as well as someone in the relevant scientific specialism Often —
usually — only a specialist can judge the weight of the evidence or the thoroughness
of the precautions against experimental error, etc , for such judgments are apt to
require a broad and detailed knowledge of background theory, not to mention a
familiarity with technical vocabulary, not easily available to the lay person But,
though only specialists may be in a position to judge the worth of this or that evidence, nevertheless,
respect for evidence, care in weighing it and persistence in seeking it out, are
neither exclusively nor essentially scientific desiderata, but are the standards by
which we judge all inquirers — detectives, historians, investigative journalists, etc. The
presumption that epistemic standards (supposmg, as they would say, that there were any)
would be internal to science also plays a covert role in encouraging a dreadful
argument ubiquitous among the New Cynics — an argument ultimately bound up with their
shift of attention away from warrant and onto acceptance Since, the argument goes,
what has passed for, i e, what has been accepted by scientists as, known fact or objective
evidence or honest inquiry, etc , has sometimes turned out to be no such thing, the
notions of known fact, objective evidence, honest Inquiry etc , are revealed to be ideological
humbug The premiss is true, manifestly, however, the conclusion doesn't follow
Indeed, this dreadful argument — I call it the "Passes-for Fallacy"8 — is not only fallacious,
but self-undermining, for if the conclusion were true, the premiss could not be a
known fact for which objective evidence had been discovered by honest inquiry
The obvious response is available to the Critical Commonsensist scientific inquiry does
not always live up to the epistemological ideal, but only by honest investigation of
the evidence can we find out when and where it fails — a response which, however, is not
quite so easily available to one who supposes that the epistemological ideal is set by the sciences
There is nothing inherently wrong with science – the presence of an
internal organization of peer review and rival approaches keeps it honest
AND our truth claims on physical science are uninfluenced by race, sex, and
class
Haack, 03 (Susan, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Miami, “Defending Science – Within Reason,” http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~principi/p323.PDF, AW)
Questions about objectivity require a similarly nuanced approach A scientific claim is either true
or else false objectively, i e, independent of whether anybody believes it 'The
evidence for a scientific claim is stronger or weaker objectively, i e, independent of how
strong or how weak anybody judges it to be But there is no guarantee that every scientist is
entirely objective, i e, is a completely unbiased and dismterested truth-seeker Scientists are
fallible human beings, they are not immune to prejudice and partisanship But the
natural sciences have managed, by and large and in the long run, to overcome individual
biases by means of an institutionalized commitment to mutual disclosure and
scrutiny, and by competition between partisans of rival approaches — by an
internal organization, In other words, that has managed on the whole to keep most
scientists, most of the time, reasonably honest These complex issues are confused
by that popular stereotype of "the scientist" as objective in the sense, not merely of being
free of imas or prejudice, but as unemotional, ummagmative, stohd, a paradigmatically convergent
thinker Perhaps some scientists are like this, but not, thank goodness, all of them "Thank
goodness," because imagination, the ability to envisage possible explanations of
puzzling phenomena, is essential to successful scientific inquiry, and because a
passionate obsession with this or that problem, even, not so seldom, a passionate
commitment to the truth of this or that elegant but as yet unsupported conjecture, or a passionate
desire to best a rival, have contributed to the progress of science As this reveals, when I
speak of "bias and partisanship" what I have primanly in mind is, so to speak, professional bias and
partisanship a scientist's too-ready willingness to accept an approach or theory because it was thought up
by his mentor, or because of his own many years' investment In developing it, or his too-ready willingness
to dismiss an approach or theory because it was thought up by his rival in the profession, or because of his
own many years' Investment in developing an alternative, and so on In the New Cynics' camp, by contrast,
the focus is on political prejudice and partisanship, on the sexism, racism,
classism, etc , with which the New Cynicism perceives science as pervaded Where
the physical sciences are concerned, given the manifest irrelevance of sex, race,
class, to the content of physical theory, the idea seems foolish Where the human
and social sciences are concerned, however, given the manifest relevance of sex,
race, class, to the content of some theories, political and professional
preconceptions come together, and it seems only exaggerated.
The truth claims of our science are still inherently good – no reason that the
risk of cooption for bad results devalues them – we have an imperative to
incorporate science into epistemological analysis
Haack, 03 (Susan, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Miami, “Defending Science – Within Reason,” http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~principi/p323.PDF, AW)
As this suggests, the vexed question of science and values is vexed, in part, because of its
many ambiguities Scientific inquiry is a kind of inquiry, so epistemic values, chief
among them respect for evidence, are necessarily relevant (which is not to say that
scientffic inquiry always or inevitably satisfies epistemic desiderata or exemplifies epistemic values) But,
as the previous paragraph reminds us, there are also moral and political questions both with
respect to scientific procedure (for example, about whether some ways of obtaining evidence are
morally unacceptable), and with respect to scientific results (for example, about whether and
how access to and applications of potentially explosive seientific results should be controlled) — that
ambiguity, by the way, was intentional! Some among the New Cynics seem to imagine that the
fact that scientific discoveries can be put to bad uses is a reason for doubting the
bona fides of those discoveries, and some seem to take for granted that those who
think that science has made many true discoveries, or even there is such a thing as
objective truth, reveal themselves to be morally deficient in some way But it isn't
enough simply to point out the obvious confusion, nor simply to protest the blatant
moral one-up-personship It is essential, also, to articulate sober answers to those
difficult questions about the role of science In society to point out, inter alia, that
only by honest, thorough inquiry can we find out what means of achieving desired
social changes would be effective And, as always, it is essential to avoid the
exaggerations of the scientistic party as well as the extravagances of the antiscience crowd to point out, inter alia, that decisions about what ways of handling the
power that scientific knowledge of the world gives us are wise or just, are not
themselves technical questions that may responsibly be left to scientists alone to
answer
The aff’s struggle to change the world through tangible action is an
inherently good embracement of life
May, 05 (Todd, Memorial Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University, “To change the world, to
celebrate life: Merleau-Ponty and Foucault on the body,” Clemson University Philosophy & Social
Criticism vol. 31, no. 5-6, http://psc.sagepub.com/content/31/5-6/517.abstract, AW)
We seek to conceive what is wrong in the world, to grasp it in a way that offers us
the possibility for change. We know that there is much that is, to use Foucault’s word, ‘intolerable’.
There is much that binds us to social and political arrangements that are oppressive, domineering,
patronizing, and exploitative. We would like to understand why this is and how it happens, in order that
we may prevent its continuance. In short, we want our theories to be tools for changing the
world, for offering it a new face, or at least a new expression. There is struggle in
this, struggle against ideas and ways of thinking that present themselves to us as
inescapable. We know this struggle from Foucault’s writings. It is not clear that he ever wrote about
anything else. But this is not the struggle I want to address here. For there is, on the other hand,
another search and another goal. They lie not so much in the revisioning of this
world as in the embrace of it. There is much to be celebrated in the lives we lead,
or in those led by others, or in the unfolding of the world as it is, a world resonant with
the rhythms of our voices and our movements. We would like to understand this, too, to grasp in
thought the elusive beauty of our world. There is, after all, no other world, except, as
Nietzsche taught, for those who would have created another one with which to
denigrate our own. In short, we would like our thought to celebrate our lives. To
change the world and to celebrate life. This, as the theologian Harvey Cox saw, is the
struggle within us.1 It is a struggle in which one cannot choose sides; or better, a struggle in
which one must choose both sides. The abandonment of one for the sake of the other
can lead only to disaster or callousness. Forsaking the celebration of life for the
sake of changing the world is the path of the sad revolutionary. In his preface to AntiOedipus, Foucault writes that one does not have to be sad in order to be revolutionary.
The matter is more urgent than that, however. One cannot be both sad and revolutionary.
Lacking a sense of the wondrous that is already here, among us, one who is bent
upon changing the world can only become solemn or bitter. He or she is focused
only on the future; the present is what is to be overcome. The vision of what is not but
must come to be overwhelms all else, and the point of change itself becomes lost. The history of the left in
the 20th century offers numerous examples of this, and the disaster that attends to it should be evident to
all of us by now. The alternative is surely not to shift one’s allegiance to the pure
celebration of life, although there are many who have chosen this path. It is at best
blindness not to see the misery that envelops so many of our fellow humans, to say
nothing of what happens to sentient nonhuman creatures. The attempt to jettison
world-changing for an uncritical assent to the world as it is requires a selfdeception that I assume would be anathema for those of us who have studied Foucault.
Indeed, it is anathema for all of us who awaken each day to an America whose
expansive boldness is matched only by an equally expansive disregard for those we
place in harm’s way.
Our attempt to take tangible action to change the world is inherently good
and necessary – experiment is necessary
May, 05 (Todd, Memorial Professor of Philosophy at Clemson University, “To change the world, to
celebrate life: Merleau-Ponty and Foucault on the body,” Clemson University Philosophy & Social
Criticism vol. 31, no. 5-6, http://psc.sagepub.com/content/31/5-6/517.abstract, AW)
What are we to make of these references? We can, to be sure, see the hand of Heidegger in them. But we
may also, and for present purposes more relevantly, see an intersection with Foucault’s work on freedom .
There is an ontology of freedom at work here, one that situates freedom not in the
private reserve of an individual but in the unfinished character of any historical
situation. There is more to our historical juncture, as there is to a painting, than appears to us on the
surface of its visibility. The trick is to recognize this, and to take advantage of it, not only
with our thoughts but with our lives. And that is why, in the end, there can be no such
thing as a sad revolutionary. To seek to change the world is to offer a new form of
life-celebration. It is to articulate a fresh way of being, which is at once a way of
seeing, thinking, acting, and being acted upon. It is to fold Being once again upon itself, this
time at a new point, to see what that might yield. There is, as Foucault often reminds us, no
guarantee that this fold will not itself turn out to contain the intolerable. In a
complex world with which we are inescapably entwined, a world we cannot view
from above or outside, there is no certainty about the results of our experiments.
Our politics are constructed from the same vulnerability that is the stuff of our art
and our daily practices. But to refuse to experiment is to resign oneself to the
intolerable; it is to abandon both the struggle to change the world and the
opportunity to celebrate living within it. And to seek one aspect without the other –
life-celebration without world-changing, world-changing without life-celebration –
is to refuse to acknowledge the chiasm of body and world that is the wellspring of
both. If we are to celebrate our lives, if we are to change our world, then perhaps the
best place to begin to think is our bodies, which are the openings to celebration and
to change, and perhaps the point at which the war within us that I spoke of earlier
can be both waged and resolved. That is the fragile beauty that, in their different ways, both
Merleau- Ponty and Foucault have placed before us. The question before us is whether, in our
lives and in our politics, we can be worthy of it.
Exploration is inherently good – the struggle for existence and the wonder
of creation is innate to human existence
Ausubel, 13 (Jesse, Rockefeller University and Co-founder of The Census of Marine Life, “Ocean
Exploration,” in The Report of Ocean Exploration 2020: A National Forum, July 19-21, 2013,
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf, AW)
Being territorial animals, we instinctively explore. In the struggle for existence we
scout for both threat and opportunity. Territory implies land, but most of the
unexplored earth is ocean. The Census of Marine Life (2000-2010) collected tens of millions of
observations of marine species from old and new expeditions. We organized data on more than 200,000
forms of marine life. We mapped the known and thus also defined the blank spaces, the unknown. When
we mapped from above the seas, we found, for example, that even our huge database
had no reliable records of marine life in most of the Arctic (Figure 1) or the eastern and
southern Pacific (Figure 2). When we mapped over the ship’s side, we found that our
huge database recorded almost entirely near the shore, surface, and seafloor (Figure
3). The largest habitat on Earth, the vast mid-waters, had almost no observations.
Moreover, between about half a million and two million marine species that would
earn a Latin binomial like homo sapiens surely remain to be discovered. And inspire us with
the wonder of creation. Census researchers mapped the unexplored oceans for life.
Marine historians and archaeologists could try to map the one million or more shipwrecks on the sea floor
and put pins on the few that have been visited. But, of course, we do not know what we do not
know, except that surprises await. Maybe giant plumes of methane occasionally stream from the
seafloor and sometimes reach the atmosphere and cause an airplane to crash, or erupt in a great bubble
that causes a tsunami. And hint at unexpected resource abundance. The unexplored ocean offers
both threat and opportunity. Let’s follow our instinct, expand exploration, reduce
threat, and seize opportunities, both practical and amazing.
Exploration is innate to human nature and holds a unique place in human
existence – discovery extends beyond the scientific process
Mayer, 13 (Larry, Professor and Director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/ NOAA-UNH,
“Exploration as Discovery,” in The Report of Ocean Exploration 2020: A National Forum, July 19-21,
2013, http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/oceanexploration2020/oe2020_report.pdf, AW)
Exploration is innate to human nature. We are compelled to explore—watch how a
baby learns about its surroundings. Exploration (at many scales) has provided the
framework for much of what we know about the world we live in. Early explorers
ventured out to unknown lands and on the SURFACE of the ocean to discover new territories, extend the
sovereignty of nations, and to find new sources of wealth and enterprise. As we have developed
tools and technologies to more efficiently and effectively explore, our vision has
expanded beyond our own planet and we now venture into space exploring,
discovering, and learning about the Universe. And yet… nearly three quarters of
our own planet—that part of it that is BENEATH the surface of the ocean—remains
virtually unexplored. This is surprising and frightening considering that we DO
KNOW that the ocean regulates our climate system and is a critical source of food
and fuel—in essence it sustains life on our planet. It is even more frightening to recognize
that despite our current efforts to understand the ocean and despite tremendous
advances in technology, we continue to make new and startling discoveries that
radically change our view of how our planet works. The discovery of deep-sea vents
and the remarkable life forms associated with them, the discovery of many new
species of plants and animals, and the discovery of new mountain systems and
deep passages on the seafloor that control the circulation of deep sea currents
(that in turn control the distribution of heat on the planet) are but a few examples of
important ocean discoveries that have changed our understanding of ocean
processes but were not part of the planned scientific process.
Biodiversity conservation relies on valuing species in terms of their global
value for a neoliberal future.
Büscher et al ’12, (Bram Büscher, Sian Sullivan, Katja Neves, Jim Igoe & Dan Brockington, “Towards
a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, (2012),
23:2, 4-30, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2012.674149)//erg
An additional aspect of this distinctiveness of capitalism is an intense focus on the
future, accompanied by dismissal of historical context and awareness. For companies, last year’s performance is important
primarily as a reference point for this and next year’s performance. The future, not the past, is the only
avenue for further profits.11 This is echoed in contemporary development policy, for
which Mosse (2005, 1) notes that: ‘‘better theory, new paradigms and alternative frameworks are constantly needed; in the
development policy
marketplace the orientation is always ‘future positive.’’’ In
conservation, ideas about a ‘‘sustainable future’’ similarly are rarely moderated through discussions of
our rather unsustainable (recent) past. Instead, the opposite seems to be occurring. As Stahel (1999, 124) elaborates: Only
within a mechanical time framework can the economic valuation of single species
be conceived . It is only within this framework, too, that the global value of an ecosystem’s
biodiversity can be expected to be obtained by simple summing-up of single
values, ignoring the emergent properties which arise from the interrelations and
interdependencies of the different species within the whole . Through such (currently very
common) valuation efforts,12 the discipline of capitalism’s ‘‘mechanical (and linear)
time’’ is further reinforced, which works well for conceptually entraining
biodiversity with economic valuation and commodifica- tion methodologies, but
has somewhat questionable implications for biodiversity (Walker, et al. 2009; Burkett 2006;
Robertson 2008). It is in failing to recognize these contributions that mainstream conservation conflates a seemingly general
‘‘economics’’ and related
terminology with the ideology and practices of neoliberal
capitalism. More fundamentally, this error conflates general human economic practice (the conceptualization, production,
distribution, and exchange of goods and services) with the particular ideology of neoliberalism (as defined above). These
conflations are often repeated in the broader realm of ecological economics through its
emphasis on a ‘‘Coasean economics’’ that assumes the emergence of social and environmental optima through the incentivized
bargaining of those with private property allocations (Muradian, et al. 2010).13 In outlining this argument, we seek to highlight our
central concern with the ways in which particular
ideologies, mistaken as objective and universal
descriptions of human economic activity, are shaping economic thought and
producing depoliti- cized policy discourses in conservation.
Governing the natural world turns it into a neoliberal object to be
exploited—nature is commodified to stretch human neoliberal regimes—
our evidence assumes your cap good answers
Büscher et al ’12, (Bram Büscher, Sian Sullivan, Katja Neves, Jim Igoe & Dan Brockington, “Towards
a Synthesized Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, (2012),
23:2, 4-30, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2012.674149)//erg
The aim of this paper is to provide a synthesized critique of neoliberal biodiversity
conservation. This, we think, is necessary for two reasons. First, most work on the intersection of neoliberalism, capitalism,
and non-human nature(s) has focused on neoliberal natures (Castree 2008a; Castree 2008b; Heynen and Robbins 2005; McCarthy
and Prudham 2004), neoliberal ecologies (Castree 2007), and neoliberal environments (Heynen, Prudham, McCarthy, and Robbins
2007), not on neoliberal conservation. These literatures explore ways in which natural
realms are transformed
through and for capital accumulation. McCarthy and Prudham (2004, 279), for example, refer to
neoliberal nature as ‘‘the politics of transforming and governing nature under
neoliberalism’’; Heynen and Robbins (2005, 6) refer to the acceleration of ‘‘the ongoing
commodification of natural things’’; while Heynen, et al. (2007, 3) refer to neoliberal
environments as ‘‘the ways that attempts to ‘stretch’ and ‘deepen’. . . the reach of
commodity circulation rely on the re-working of environmental governance and
on entrenching the commodification of nature, and vice versa.’’ Our synthesis, by contrast,
focuses on neoliberal conservation as an amalgamation of ideology and techniques informed by the
premise that natures can only be ‘‘saved’’ through their submission to capital and
its subsequent revaluation in capitalist terms, what McAfee (1999) has aptly labeled ‘‘selling nature to
save it.’’ Put another way, neoliberal conservation shifts the focus from how nature is used in and through the expansion of
capitalism, to how nature is conserved in and through the expansion of capitalism. Second, a
spate of recent
publications investigates the trend of neoliberal conservation, yet their lessons
remain disconnected. We refer, amongst others, to Sullivan (2005; 2006; 2009), Igoe and Brockington (2007), Dressler
and Bu ̈scher (2008), Bu ̈scher (2008; 2010a; 2010b), Brockington, et al. (2008), Brockington (2009), Igoe (2010), Fletcher
(2010), Brockington and Duffy (2010), Roth and Dressler (2012), and Arsel and Bu ̈scher (2012),1 as well as several writings in
conservation biology that deal with ‘‘neoliberal’’ conservation in all but name.2 This flurry of scholarly activity recalls Castree’s
(2008a) critique of
geographers’ understanding and writing about neoliberalism and
nature: practitioners and scholars are ‘‘using the same terms*‘neoliberalism’ and ‘neoliberalization’*to refer to and judge
phenomena and situations that are not necessarily similar or comparable.’’ James Ferguson (2010) additionally asserts that ‘‘ uses
of neoliberalism’’ in ‘‘progressive scholarship’’ can produce something of a
kneejerk reaction against any initiative that contains neoliberal elements, even
while that initiative might manifest progressive outcomes in some terms and at
some scales. For these reasons, it is important to synthesize the wider lessons of this emerging literature, especially since
ongoing work on neoliberal conservation and neoliberal natures remains strangely
disconnected.3 We attempt in the discussion that follows to provide a clearer picture of what is meant by neoliberal
conservation, how it relates to literatures on neoliberal nature, ecology and environments, and why it bears relevance
for those interested in biodiversity conservation and human/nature
entanglements. Given the diverse and hybrid ‘‘uses of neoliberalism’’ (Ferguson 2010; Larner 2000), and in order to
simplify our mission, we use the term neoliberalism in a specific way: as a political
ideology that aims to subject political, social, and ecological affairs to capitalist
market dynamics (Bu ̈scher 2008; Foucault 2008). However, we do not see neoliberalism as functioning as some
universal code behind practices. We follow Foucault in understanding neoliberal ideology to be accompanied by and made manifest
through distinct governmentalities (techniques and technologies for managing people and nature) and embodied practices in social,
material, and epistemological realms. Combined, these work as biopower to construct and regulate life and lives in significant ways
(Nally 2011). We commence with the assertion that there has been a conflation of what is generally (and simplistically) referred to in
conservation discourses as economics with the ideological assumptions of neoliberalism. Through elaborating this conflation, its
links with wider capitalist processes, and their effects on ecosystems, we argue that it becomes easier to distinguish various negative
impacts of neoliberal win-win models for biodiversity conservation and so to construct a more synthesized critique around three
main points: 1) the stimulation of contradictions; 2) appropriation 1And the articles in the special issues of Antipode, Geoforum, and
Development and Change introduced by the latter three articles. 2See, for example, Vira and Adams (2008), Walker, et al. (2009),
Chan, et al. (2007). Peterson, et al. (2009) is an exception where the structuring influence of neoliberalism specifically is
highlighted. 3Existing
writing on neoliberal natures, ecologies, and environments
seems largely to ignore scholarship on neoliberal conservation. Certainly the relative youth of
the latter may explain its scarcity in key collections such as Heynen, et al. (2007). But that could not explain its complete absence
from, for example, Bakker’s (2010) recent paper in Progress in Human Geography. A major exception is Robertson’s (2004)
prescient work on wetland mitigation banking. Downloaded by [Birkbeck College], [Sian Sullivan] at 10:23 09 May 2012 6 BRAM
BU ̈ SCHER ET AL. and misrepresentation; and 3) the disciplining of dissent. Inspired by Bruno Latour’s recent ‘‘compositionist
manifesto,’’ our conclusion outlines some ideas for moving beyond critique. First, however, we briefly outline what marks a focus on
conservation and why this is important.
3. Science diplomacy reproduces neoliberal competition – the plan is
deployed to attract scientists to the US to empower the American economy
Flink & Schreiterer 10
(Tim Flink, Research Fellow of the Research Group @ WZB Berlin Social Science Center, & Ulrich
Schreiterer, Research Fellow of the President's Project Group @ WZB Berlin Social Science Center,
“Science diplomacy at the intersection of S&T policies and foreign affairs: toward a typology of national
approaches”, Science and Public Policy, 37(9), November 2010, pages 665–677)
Nowadays it
is widely acknowledged that¶ science, technology and international affairs
affect one another, bearing pervasive mutual influences. It goes without saying that
globalization has considerably enhanced and extended the importance of science
and technology (S&T) for and in international relations (IR) beyond their traditional domains.
National policy-making, for instance, today can no longer afford to ignore S&T
developments and activities abroad, especially not those of rivaling countries. At the
same time , S&T issues underpin many concurrent global challenges while scientific
collaboration clearly bears upon social capital and trust-building badly needed to
nourish civil relations between different and above all adversarial countries or
cultures. No wonder, then, that S&T somehow or other have found their way into the
foreign policy of¶ numerous leading industrial countries. Notwithstanding their different
objectives and¶ dynamics, S&T have gained grounds in IR, both as an issue in its own right
as well as a tool for ‘science diplomacy’ (SD). Apart from strengthening a nation’ s
knowledge and innovation base, international scientific cooperation comes to be
seen as an effective agent to manage conflicts, improve global understanding, lay
grounds for mutual respect and contribute to capacity-building in deprived world
regions . All in all it has become subject to policy initiatives around the world, though its scope and objectives, instruments and
intensity differ widely.¶ The ongoing de-nationalization of scientific research (Wagner and Leydesdorff,
2005), economic globalization, and growing international competition on all markets
for goods and services keep extending the playing fields of IR. S &T have gained an
important and ever-increasing role in the competitive quarrel for market shares,
power, and influence (Skolnikoff, 1993; Wagner, 2002).¶ The more a nation’s prosperity and
economic success hinge on its ability to tap into global resources and to attract
talent, capital, support and admiration, the better it is advised to look for
strategies to use its R&D assets most effectively to secure competitive advantages .
At the same time, global phenomena such as climate change, infectious diseases,
famines, migration, nuclear non-proliferation or terrorism call for international
collaboration in S&T to tackle, or at least to ease, the many multi-faceted problems
they raise or entail. The controversial Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an important example for this
new kind of global approach and science policy, the less prominent Global Science Forum of the OECD just
another.
The development of scientific research is a form of technological
dynamism. It continues bourgeoisie rule and maintains the production
chain through continued manipulation of the resources
Rosenberg ’74 (Nathan Rosenberg, PhD in the history of technology, University of Wisconsin, July –
Aug 1974, “Karl Marx on the Economic Role of Science’, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1837142 .) //ky
It is a well-known feature of the Marxian analysis of capitalism that Marx views the system as bringing about unprecedented increases in The author is grateful to Professors Stanley Engerman and Eugene
that "the
bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive
and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations to- gether.
Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to
industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing
of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations
conjured out of the ground-what earlier cen- tury had even a presentiment that
such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?" (Marx and Engels 1951, 1: 37). No single question,
Smolensky for critical comments on an earlier draft. 713 human productivity and in man's mastery over nature. Marx and Engels told their readers, in The Communist Manifesto,
therefore, would seem to be more important to the whole Marxian anal- ysis of capitalist development than the question: Why is capitalism such an immensely productive system by comparison with all earlier
, the social and
economic structure of capitalism is one which creates enormous incentives for the
generation of technological change. Marx and Engels insist that the bourgeoisie is unique as a ruling class because, unlike all earlier ruling classes whose
economic interests were indissolubly linked to the maintenance of the status quo , the very essence of bourgeois rule is technological
dynamism.' Capitalism generates unique incentives for the introduction of new,
cost-reducing technologies. The question which I am particularly interested in examining is the role which is played, within the Marxian framework, by science and
forms of economic organization? The question, obviously, has been put before, and certain portions of Marx's answer are in fact abundantly plain. In particular
scientific progress in the dynamic growth of capitalism. For surely the growth in resource productivity can never have been solely a function of the development of capitalist institutions. It is easy to see the
Surely the technological vitality of an
emergent capitalism was closely linked up with the state of scientific knowledge
and with industry's capacity to exploit such knowledge. Marx's (and Engels's) position, briefly stated, is to
affirm that science is, indeed, a fundamental factor accounting for the growth in
resource productivity and man's enlarged capacity to manipulate his natural
environment for the attainment of human purposes. However, the state- ment requires two immediate and highly significant
qualifications, which will constitute our major concern in this paper: (1) science does not, according to Marx, function in history as an independent variable; and (2) science has come
to play a critical role as a systematic contributor to increasing productivity only at
a very recent (from Marx's perspective) I"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form,
existence of such institutions as a necessary condition but hardly as a sufficient con- dition for such growth.
was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes" (Marx and Engels 1951, 1:36). point in history. The ability of science to perform this role had necessarily to await the fulfillment
Just as
the economic sphere and the requirements of the productive process shape man's
political and social institutions, so do they also shape his scientific activity at all
stages of history. Science does not grow or develop in response to forces internal to
science or the scien- tific community. It is not an autonomous sphere of human
activity. Rather, science needs to be understood as a social activity which is
respon- sive to economic forces. It is man's changing needs as they become articulated in the sphere of production which determine the direction of scien- tific
progress. Indeed, this is generally true of all human problem-solving activity, of which science is a part. As Marx states in the introduction to his Critique of Political Economy: "Mankind always takes
up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find the problem itself arises only
when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least
in the process of formulation" (Marx 1904, pp. 12-13). Marx views specific scientific disciplines as developing in response to problems arising in the sphere of
of certain objective conditions. What these con- ditions were has not been understood adequately. I Marx's treatment of scientific progress is consistent with his broader his- torical materialism.
production. The materialistic conception of history and society involves the rejection of the notion that man's intel- lectual pursuits can be accorded a status independent of material con- cerns. It emphasizes the
necessity of systematically relating the realm of thinking and ideas to man's material concerns. Thus, the scientific enter- prise itself needs to be examined in that perspective. "Feuerbach speaks in particular of the
perception of natural science; he mentions secrets which are disclosed only to the eye of the physicist and chemist: but where would natural science be without industry and commerce? Even this 'pure' natural
Egyptian astronomy
had developed out of the com- pelling need to predict the rise and fall of the Nile,
upon which Egyptian agriculture was so vitally dependent (Marx 1906, p. 564, n. 1). The in- creasing (if still "sporadic")
science is provided with an aim, as with its material, only through trade and industry, through the sensuous activity of men" (Marx and Engels 1947, p. 36).
resort to machinery in the seventeenth century was, says Marx, "of the greatest importance, because it supplied the great mathematicians of that time with a practical basis and stimulant to the creation of the
Like all other sciences, mathematics arose
out of the needs of men; from the measurement of land and of the content of
vessels; from the computation of time and mechanics" (Engels 1939, p. 46; emphasis Engels's. Cf. Marx 1906, p. 564). gearing as
science of mechanics."2 The difficulties encountered with 2 Marx 1906, pp. 382-83. Engels states: "
waterpower was being harnessed to larger millstones was "one of the circumstances that led to a more accurate investigation of the laws of friction."3