GDI OTEC Aff
1AC
Observation 1- Inherency
Despite its potential, there is little investment and a lack of governmental support
for ocean thermal energy conversion in the status quo.
FRIEDMAN, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Political Review, 2014
BECCA, march, Ocean Energy Council, “EXAMINING THE FUTURE OF OCEAN
THERMAL ENERGY CONVERSION”, http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/examining-futureocean-thermal-energy-conversion/, accessed 7-7-14, Jacob
Although it may seem like an environmentalist’s fantasy, experts in oceanic energy contend that the technology to provide a truly infinite source of power to the United States already exists in the form of Ocean
Despite enthusiastic projections and promising prototypes, however, a lack of
governmental support and the need for risky capital investment have stalled OTEC in its research
and development phase. Regardless, oceanic energy experts have high hopes. Dr. Joseph Huang, Senior Scientist at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration and former leader of a Department of Energy team on oceanic energy, told the HPR, “ If we can use one percent of the energy
[generated by OTEC] for electricity and other things, the potential is so big. It is more than 100 to 1000
times more than the current consumption of worldwide energy. The potential is huge. There is not
any other renewable energy that can compare with OTEC.” The Science of OTEC French physicist George Claude first explored the science of
Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC).
OTEC in the early twentieth century, and he built an experimental design in 1929. Unfortunately for Claude, the high maintenance needed for an OTEC plant, especially given the frequency of storms in tropical
ocean climates, caused him to abandon the project. Nevertheless, his work demonstrated that the difference in temperature between the surface layer and the depths of the ocean was enough to generate power, using
the warmer water as the heat source and the cooler water as a heat sink. OTEC takes warm water and pressurizes it so that it becomes steam, then uses the steam to power a turbine which creates power, and
Despite the sound science, a fully functioning
OTEC prototype has yet to be developed. The high costs of building even a model pose the main
barrier. Although piecemeal experiments have proven the effectiveness of the individual
components, a large-scale plant has never been built. Luis Vega of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research estimated in an OTEC
completes the cycle by using the cold water to return the steam to its liquid state. Huge Capital, Huge Risks
summary presentation that a commercial-size five-megawatt OTEC plant could cost from 80 to 100 million dollars over five years. According to Terry Penney, the Technology Manager at the National Renewable
the combination of cost and risk is OTEC’s main liability. “We’ve talked to inventors
and other constituents over the years, and it’s still a matter of huge capital investment and a huge
risk, and there are many [alternate forms of energy] that are less risky that could produce power with the same
certainty,” Penney told the HPR. Moreover, OTEC is highly vulnerable to the elements in the marine environment. Big storms or a hurricane like Katrina could completely disrupt energy production by
Energy Laboratory,
mangling the OTEC plants. Were a country completely dependent on oceanic energy, severe weather could be debilitating. In addition, there is a risk that the salt water surrounding an OTEC plant would cause the
machinery to “rust or corrode” or “fill up with seaweed or mud,” according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesman. Even environmentalists have impeded OTEC’s development. According to
Given the risks, costs, and uncertain
it seems unlikely that federal support for OTEC is forthcoming. Jim Anderson, co-founder of Sea Solar Power Inc., a
company specializing in OTEC technology, told the HPR, “Years ago in the ’80s, there was a small [governmental] program for OTEC and it
was abandoned…That philosophy has carried forth to this day. There are a few people in the
Penney, people do not want to see OTEC plants when they look at the ocean. When they see a disruption of the pristine marine landscape, they think pollution.
popularity of OTEC,
Department of Energy who have blocked government funding for this. It’s not the
Democrats, not the Republicans. It’s a bureaucratic issue.”
OTEC is not completely off the government’s radar,
OTEC even
enjoys some support on a state level. Hawaii ’s National Energy Laboratory, for example, conducts OTEC research around the islands. For now, though,
American interests in OTEC promise to remain largely academic. The Naval Research Academy and Oregon State University are
however. This past year, for the first time in a decade, Congress debated reviving the oceanic energy program in the energy bill, although the proposal was ultimately defeated.
conducting research programs off the coasts of Oahu and Oregon , respectively. Do the Benefits Outweight the Costs? Oceanic energy advocates insist that the long-term benefits of OTEC more than justify the short-
changes in the economic climate over the past few decades have increased
OTEC’s viability. According to Huang, current economic conditions are more favorable to OTEC. At $65-70 per barrel, oil is
roughly six times more expensive than in the 1980s, when initial OTEC cost projections were made. Moreover, a lower interest rate makes capital investment
more attractive. OTEC plants may also generate revenue from non-energy products. Anderson described several
term expense. Huang said that the
additional revenue streams, including natural by-products such as hydrogen, ethanol, and desalinated fresh water. OTEC can also serve as a form of aquaculture. “You are effectively fertilizing the upper photic
, these benefits are not limited
to the United States . “Look at Africa , look at South America , look at the Far East . It is a gigantic pot of wealth
for everybody… People are crying for power.” In fact, as the U.S. government is dragging its feet, other
countries are moving forward with their own designs and may well beat American industry to a
zone…The fishing around the sea solar power plants will be among the best fishing holes in the world naturally,” Anderson said. And, he added
fully-functioning plant. In India , there has been significant academic interest in OTEC, although the National Institute of Ocean Technology project has stalled due to a lack of funding.
Japan , too, has run into capital cost issues, but Saga University ’s Institute of Ocean Energy has recently won prizes for advances in refinement of the OTEC cycle. Taiwan and various European nations have also
explored OTEC as part of their long-term energy strategy. Perhaps the most interest is in the Philippines , where the Philippine Department of Energy has worked with Japanese experts to select 16 potential OTEC
Were its vast potential harnessed, OTEC could change the face of energy
consumption by causing a shift away from fossil fuels. Environmentally, such a transition would
greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decrease the rate of global warming. Geopolitically,
having an alternative energy source could free the United States , and other countries, from
foreign oil dependency. As Huang said, “We just cannot ignore oceanic energy, especially OTEC, because the ocean is so huge and the potential is so big… No matter who assesses, if you
sites. The Future of Oceanic Energy
rely on fossil energy for the future, the future isn’t very bright…For the future, we have to look into renewable energy, look for the big resources, and the future is in the ocean.”
Advantage( )—Scarcity
Resource shortages are priming global conflict—food energy and water shortages
are the most probable scenarios for escalation
Klare 2013(Michael, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and
defense correspondent for The Nation, 2013, " How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change
Could Produce a Global Explosion", http://www.thenation.com/article/173967/how-resourcescarcity-and-climate-change-could-produce-global-explosion)
Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the US intelligence community, the earth is
already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort
humanity has never before experienced. Two nightmare scenarios—a global scarcity of vital
resources and the onset of extreme climate change—are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are
likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition and conflict. Just what this tsunami of
disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river
systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees
(with resulting anti-migrant violence) and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such
mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time, all regions of
the planet will be affected. To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the
forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm. Resource Shortages and Resource Wars Start with one simple given: the
prospect of future scarcities of vital natural resources, including energy, water, land, food and critical
minerals. This in itself would guarantee social unrest, geopolitical friction and war. It is important to note that
absolute scarcity doesn’t have to be on the horizon in any given resource category for this scenario to kick in. A lack of adequate
supplies to meet the needs of a growing, ever more urbanized and industrialized global population is enough. Given the wave of
extinctions that scientists are recording, some resources—particular species of fish, animals and trees, for example—will become less
abundant in the decades to come, and may even disappear altogether. But key materials for modern civilization like oil, uranium and
copper will simply prove harder and more costly to acquire, leading to supply bottlenecks and periodic shortages. Oil—the single
most important commodity in the international economy—provides an apt example. Although global oil supplies may
actually grow in the coming decades, many experts
doubt that they can be expanded sufficiently to meet the
needs of a rising global middle class that is, for instance, expected to buy millions of new cars in the near future. In its
2011 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency claimed that an anticipated global oil demand of 104 million barrels per
day in 2035 will be satisfied. This, the report suggested, would be thanks in large part to additional supplies of “unconventional oil”
(Canadian tar sands, shale oil and so on), as well as 55 million barrels of new oil from fields “yet to be found” and “yet to be
developed.” However, many analysts scoff at this optimistic assessment, arguing that rising production costs (for energy that
will be ever more difficult and costly to extract), environmental opposition, warfare,
corruption and other impediments
will make it extremely difficult to achieve increases of this magnitude. In other words, even if production
manages for a time to top the 2010 level of 87 million barrels per day, the goal of 104 million barrels will never be
reached and the world’s major consumers will face virtual, if not absolute, scarcity. Water provides another
potent example. On an annual basis, the supply of drinking water provided by natural precipitation remains
more or less constant: about 40,000 cubic kilometers. But much of this precipitation lands on Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia
and inner Amazonia where there are very few people, so the supply available to major concentrations of humanity is often surprisingly
limited. In many regions with high population levels, water supplies are already relatively sparse. This is
especially true of North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, where the demand for water
continues to grow as a result of rising populations, urbanization and the emergence of new water-intensive industries. The
result, even when the supply remains constant, is an environment of increasing scarcity. Wherever you look, the picture is roughly the
same: supplies of critical resources may be rising or falling, but rarely do they appear to be outpacing demand, producing a sense of
widespread and systemic scarcity. However generated, a perception of scarcity—or imminent scarcity—regularly leads
to anxiety, resentment, hostility and contentiousness. This pattern is very well understood, and has been
evident throughout human history. In his book Constant Battles, for example, Steven LeBlanc, director of collections for
Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, notes that many ancient civilizations experienced higher
levels of warfare when faced with resource shortages brought about by population growth, crop failures or
persistent drought. Jared Diamond, author of the bestseller Collapse, has detected a similar pattern in Mayan civilization and the
Anasazi culture of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. More recently, concern over adequate food for the home population was a
significant factor in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Germany’s invasions of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941,
according to Lizzie Collingham, author of The Taste of War. Although the global supply of most basic commodities has grown
enormously since the end of World War II, analysts see the persistence of resource-related conflict in areas where materials remain
scarce or there is anxiety about the future reliability of supplies. Many experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Darfur and
other war-ravaged areas of North Africa has been driven, at least in part, by competition among desert tribes for access to scarce water
supplies, exacerbated in some cases by rising population levels. “In Darfur,” says a 2009 report from the UN Environment
Programme on the role of natural resources in the conflict, “recurrent drought, increasing demographic pressures, and political
marginalization are among the forces that have pushed the region into a spiral of lawlessness and violence that has led to 300,000
deaths and the displacement of more than two million people since 2003.” Anxiety over future supplies is often also a
factor in conflicts that break out over access to oil or control of contested undersea reserves of oil and natural gas.
In 1979, for instance, when the Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Washington began
to fear that someday it might be denied access to Persian Gulf oil. At that point, President Jimmy Carter promptly announced what
came to be called the Carter Doctrine. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter affirmed that any move to impede the flow of oil
from the Gulf would be viewed as a threat to America’s “vital interests” and would be repelled by “any means necessary, including
military force.” In 1990, this principle was invoked by President George H.W. Bush to justify intervention in the first Persian Gulf
War, just as his son would use it, in part, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today, it remains the basis for US plans to employ force
to stop the Iranians from closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through
which about 35 percent of the world’s seaborne oil commerce passes. Recently, a set of resource conflicts have been rising toward the
boiling point between China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia when it comes to control of offshore oil and gas reserves in the South
China Sea. Although the resulting naval clashes have yet to result in a loss of life, a strong possibility of military escalation exists. A
similar situation has also arisen in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are jousting for control over similarly valuable undersea
reserves. Meanwhile, in the South Atlantic Ocean, Argentina and Britain are once again squabbling over the Falkland Islands (called
Las Malvinas by the Argentinians) because oil has been discovered in surrounding waters. By all accounts,
resource-driven potential conflicts like these will only multiply in the years ahead as demand
rises, supplies dwindle and more of what remains will be found in disputed areas. In a 2012 study titled
Resources Futures, the respected British think-tank Chatham House expressed particular concern about possible
resource wars over water, especially in areas like the Nile and Jordan River basins where several groups or countries must
share the same river for the majority of their water supplies and few possess the wherewithal to develop alternatives. “Against this
backdrop of tight supplies and competition, issues related to water rights, prices, and pollution are becoming contentious,” the report
noted. “In areas with limited capacity to govern shared resources, balance competing demands, and mobilize new investments,
tensions over water may erupt into more open confrontations.”
Scenario one is water:
Water conflicts will go nuclear
Weiner 1990 (Jonathan, Visiting Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, “The
Next One Hundred Years: Shaping Fate of Our Living Earth,” p214)
If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, then we
may destroy ourselves with the C-bomb,
the Change Bomb. And in a world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the
other. Already in the Middle East, from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over
dwindling water supplies and rising populations are reaching what many experts
describe as a flashpoint. A climate shift in the single battle-scarred nexus might trigger
international tensions that will unleash some of the 60,000 nuclear warheads the world has
stockpiled since Trinity.
Water shortages Central Asian war
Privadarshi 2012 (Nitish, lecturer in the department of environment and water management at
Ranchi University in India, “War for water is not a far cry”, June
16,http://www.cleangangaportal.org/node/44)
That's been a constant dilemma for the Central Asian states since they became independent after the Soviet break-up. ¶ Much of
Central Asia's water flows from the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, leaving
downstream countries Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan dependent and worried
about the effects of planned hydropower plants upstream. ¶ Tashkent fears that those two countries' use of
water from Central Asia's two great rivers -- the Syr Darya and Amu Darya -- to generate power will diminish the amount reaching
Uzbekistan, whose 28 million inhabitants to make up Central Asia's largest population. ¶ After the collapse of communism in the
1990s, a dispute arose between Hungary and Slovakia over a project to dam the Danube River. It was the first of its type heard by the
There are 17
European countries directly reliant on water from the Danube so there is clear potential for
conflict if any of these countries act selfishly.¶ Experts worry that dwindling water supplies
could likely result in regional conflicts in the future. For example, in oil-and-gas rich Central
Asia, the upstream countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan hold 90 percent of the region's
water resources, while Uzbekistan, the largest consumer of water in the region, is located
downstream.
International Court of Justice and highlighted the difficulty for the Court to resolve such issues decisively.
Extinction
Blank 2000(Stephen, Expert on the Soviet Bloc for the Strategic Studies Institute, “American
Grand Strategy and the Transcaspian Region”, World Affairs. 9-22)
Thus many structural
conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where third parties intervene
in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. The outbreak of violence by disaffected Islamic elements, the
drug trade, the Chechen wars, and the unresolved ethnopolitical conflicts that dot the region, not to
mention the undemocratic and unbalanced distribution of income across corrupt governments, provide plenty of
tinder for future fires. Many Third World conflicts generated by local structural factors also have great
potential for unintended escalation. Big powers often feel obliged to rescue their proxies and
proteges. One or another big power may fail to grasp the stakes for the other side since interests here are
not as clear as in Europe. Hence commitments involving the use of nuclear weapons or perhaps even
conventional war to prevent defeat of a client are not well established or clear as in Europe. For instance, in 1993 Turkish
now exist
noises about intervening on behalf of Azerbaijan induced Russian leaders to threaten a nuclear war in that case. Precisely because
Turkey is a NATO ally but probably could not prevail in a
long war against Russia, or if it could, would
conceivably trigger a potential nuclear blow (not a small possibility given the erratic nature of Russia's declared
nuclear strategies), the danger of major war is higher here than almost everywhere else in the CIS or the
"arc of crisis" from the Balkans to China. As Richard Betts has observed, The greatest danger lies in areas where (1)
the potential for serious instability is high; (2) both superpowers perceive vital interests; (3)
neither recognizes that the other's perceived interest or commitment is as great as its own; (4) both have the capability to inject
conventional forces; and (5) neither
has willing proxies capable of settling the situation.(77)
Otec is key to solve shortages—only efficient energy source for desalination
Oney 2013(Dr. Steven, Chief Science Advisor for OTE, Ocean Engineering Expert, November
20, "Ocean Thermal Energy and Water Production", http://empowertheocean.com/ocean-thermalenergy-water-production/)
The scarcity of potable water is a growing problem worldwide, particularly in arid regions and among
developing countries. Compounding this problem is the increasing contamination of freshwater sources, which comprise only about
2.5% of all water on Earth. Of this small portion, only 0.5% of the total fresh water available is found in easily accessible sources such
as lakes, rivers and aquifers. The rest is frozen in glaciers. The remaining 97.5% is seawater. water In the United States alone, each
person consumes an average of 400 liters of fresh water per day. That is more than 87 gallons daily per U.S. citizen. By contrast, in
other western countries, the consumption level reaches only 150 liters per day. Some countries in Africa have daily consumption rates
as low as 20 liters, which is at the World Health Organization’s recommended lower limit for individual survival. When considering
infrastructure and communal needs such as those of schools and hospitals, the necessary level is more than doubled to 50 liters per
person per day. With the rising global population, industrialization of developing nations and overall increase in quality of life
throughout most parts of the world, fresh water consumption levels are rising rapidly. Approximately
67% of the world’s
population will be water stressed by 2025 , as reported by the UN. According to the United Nations Atlas of
the Oceans, more than 44% of the world’s inhabitants live within 150 kilometers of the coast. In the United States, this is true for 53%
of the population. In another 30 years, it is estimated that over 70% of the global population will be coastal.
The crowding of the population in limited areas inevitably leads to overexploitation of regional resources including fresh water.
Given the number of people within access of the coast and the sea, it is naturally
advantageous to turn to the ocean for adequate fresh water supplies. Over 75% of the world’s
desalinated water capacity is used by the Middle East and North Africa according to the USGS. The United States is one of the most
important industrialized countries in terms of desalinated water consumption at about 6.5%. California and Florida are the major
consumers of desalinated water in the US. Additionally, populated areas struck by natural disasters are faced with a great need to
quickly supply potable water to the victims for drinking, cooking and sanitation purposes. In industrialized nations, the existing
freshwater infrastructure is often damaged during a disaster or contaminated to the point that it is unusable in the immediate recovery
period. In developing nations, freshwater infrastructure might be entirely absent, making the acquisition and distribution of potable
Seawater desalination requires
a significant amount of energy regardless of the technique used. There are several renewable energy (RE)
water all the more difficult. Importance of water production in association with OTEC
technologies currently in use to power desalination processes. Some of these relationships are in commercial operation today; others
have yet to be demonstrated. Solar and wind are proven, and tidal and wave energy have very recently begun to show much promise,
but are still in the early phases of commercialization. Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC)
is unique in that it
naturally combines opportunities for power production with seawater desalination. Using
the temperature differential between warm ocean surface water and cold deep water to
generate clean baseload (24/7) renewable energy, in a closed cycle OTEC system, the heat from the surface
water is used to boil a working fluid with a low boiling point (such as ammonia), creating steam which turns a turbine
generator to produce electricity. The chill from the cold deep water is then used to condense the steam back into liquid form, allowing
Because
massive amounts of seawater are pumped through an OTEC system in order to generate this
baseload (24/7) power, the proximity of the voluminous energy and water supplies allow OTEC
to function efficiently and economically with typical thermal desalination processes, as well
as those driven solely by electricity. The environmental impact of desalinating seawater is quite high when using
the system to continuously repeat this process, perpetually fuelled by the sun’s reliable daily heating of the surface water.
fossil fuels. Replacing the energy supply with a renewable energy source, such as OTEC, eliminates the pollution caused by fossil
fuels and other problems associated with the use of fossil fuels to produce potable water. Greater self-sufficiency is also achieved
through the use of a readily available source of energy like OTEC, making it unnecessary to rely on increasingly expensive fossil fuels
imported from often unstable or unfriendly countries. In the last two decades, rising fossil fuel prices and technical
advances
in the offshore oil industry, many of which are applicable to deep cold water pipe
technology for OTEC, mean that small (5-20MW) land-based OTEC plants can now be built with offthe-shelf components, with minimal technology/engineering risks for plant construction and operation. In fact, the authoritative US
Government agency NOAA issued a 2009 report concluding that, using a single cold water pipe (CWP), a
10MW OTEC plant is now “technically feasible using current design, manufacturing, deployment techniques
and materials.” These two historic changes have now made OTEC electricity pricing increasingly competitive, particularly in tropical
island countries where electricity prices, based almost entirely on imported fossil fuels, are currently in the exorbitant range of 30-60
cents/kwh. Adding
potable water production to the equation only further improves the
economic attractiveness of this technology’s unique symbiosis between clean reliable energy
and fresh water. With the growing global need for potable water, the lack of available fresh water sources, increasing
concentration of populations in coastal regions, and rising energy prices, pairing potable water production with baseload (24/7)
renewable energy from the sea is a natural fit. And with data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the United States
Department of Energy indicating that at least 68 countries and 29 territories around the globe are potential candidates for OTEC
plants, the technology’s world-wide capacity for fresh water production and CO2 emissions diminution is truly staggering. Although
it has not yet reached its commercial potential, OTEC is now a technically and economically viable option that is rapidly emerging not
only as a top contender in meeting the energy demand for coastal communities in years to come, but also a major global player in the
sustainable potable water generation market as well. While there is certainly truth in the old adage that oil and water do not mix,
OTEC is concrete proof that the same cannot be said of energy and water.
Scenario two is food:
Food shortages cause extinction
Cribb 2010(Julian, principal of JCA, fellow of the Australian Academy
of Technological Sciences and Engineering, “The Coming Famine: The
Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It”, pg 10)
The character of human conflict has also changed: since the early 1990S, more
wars have been triggered by
disputes over food, land, and water than over mere political or ethnic differences. This should not
surprise US: people have fought over the means of survival for most of history. But in the abbreviated reports on the nightly media,
and even in the rarefied realms of government policy, the focus is almost invariably on the players—the warring national, ethnic, or
religious factions—rather than on the play, the deeper subplots building the tensions that ignite conflict. Caught up in these are groups
of ordinary, desperate people fearful that there is no longer sufficient food, land, and water to feed their children—and believing that
they must fight ‘the others” to secure them. At the same time, the number of refugees in the world doubled, many of them escaping
from conflicts and famines precipitated by food and resource shortages. Governments in troubled regions tottered and fell. The
coming famine is planetary because it involves both the immediate effects of hunger on
directly affected populations in heavily populated regions of the world in the next forty
years—and also the impacts of war, government failure, refugee crises, shortages, and food
price spikes that will affect all human beings, no matter who they are or where they live. It is an emergency
because unless it is solved, billions will experience great hardship, and not only in the poorer regions. Mike Murphy, one of the
world’s most progressive dairy farmers, with operations in Ireland, New Zealand, and North and South America, succinctly summed it
all up: “Global warming gets all the publicity but the real imminent threat to the human race is starvation on a massive scale.
Taking a 10—30 year view, I believe that food shortages, famine and huge social unrest are
probably the greatest threat the human race has ever faced . I believe future food shortages are a
far bigger world threat than global warming.”2° The coming famine is also complex, because it is driven not by one or two, or even a
half dozen, factors but rather by the confluence of many large and profoundly intractable causes that tend to amplify one another. This
means that it cannot easily be remedied by “silver bullets” in the form of technology, subsidies, or single-country policy changes,
because of the synergetic character of the things that power it.
OTEC solves multiple internals to scarcity
Binger 2004 (Al, Visiting Professor at Saga University Institute of Ocean Energy, Director of the
University of West Indies Centre for Environment and Development, “Potential and Future
Prospects for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) In Small Islands Developing States
(SIDS),” United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)
Food Security in SIDS and the Potential of OTEC)
In the majority of SIDS, particularly the smaller islands, the
limited availability of land with fertile soil and
limited water availability severely constrains food production. All SIDS depend on imports of food to
meet both domestic and tourism needs. Food security for SIDS is therefore an issue of having the foreign exchange availability to
import the grains, milk and protein sources that they are either unable to produce or cannot produce in adequate quantities for their
demand. With growing population and increasing tourism, the majority of SIDS will have no option but to increase importation of
essential foods. OTEC
has the potential to contribute to food security in SIDS in many ways.
First, direct contribution is the utilization of large volumes of nutrient rich cold water,
which would be discharged from an operating facility at about 10 degrees Celsius, for Mari-culture
production. This application is demonstrated in Hawaii, US. Feasibility studies conducted by the University of the West Indies
Centre for Environment and Development (UWICED), based on the Hawaiian experience, showed that the gross return
perunit of land used for Mari-culture8 would be more than ten times greater than which
accrued from growing bananas for export, and more than thirty times sugar earning. The
employment generated was 300% greater than for bananas and more than 600% for sugar. Therefore, the first potential
contribution by OTEC to food security would be a combination of enhanced domestic
protein production and foreign exchange earnings. The second potential contribution would be through
increased availability of fresh water as a co- product from the OTEC plant, which would be available to
support hydroponics farming. The third potential contribution would be using some of the
cold seawater discharge to regulate greenhouse temperature and thereby maximize yield.
The fourth potential would be based on the use of the water discharged from the plant to
regulate the temperature of reefs to maximize photosynthetic activity and increase natural
marine production in the coastal areas and beyond. The final potential contribution would
come from the significant reduction in the vulnerability of SIDS to the escalating and
volatile prices for petroleum, thereby significantly increasing the availability of foreign
exchange available to import food supplies.
Scenario three is oil:
OTEC has the capability to replace oil—U.S. development is key—infrastructure
Rauhauser 2008(Neal, The Cutting Edge Science and Technology Staff Writer, November 3,
"Ocean Thermals Can Produce Green Hydrogen",
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=874&pageid=28&pagename=Sci-Tech)
Many have heard the phrase "The Hydrogen Economy" and it stirred hopes, but reality is not so rosy. The hydrogen molecule, just a
pair of electrons and protons, misbehaves in all sorts of ways. Its tiny size allows it to slip past tank and pipeline seals, when under
pressure it embrittles metals just like the loose neutrons from a nuclear reactor, and it can explode or cause a flash fire across a wide
range of conditions. Hydrogen doesn't even qualify as an energy source as it's not found in its free form anywhere on Earth—for us it's
just an energy carrier. Every bit we have we've made by either stripping it from fossil fuels or by cracking water using electricity. The
only way hydrogen qualifies as “clean” is if it's made with electricity that came from a renewable source. Sometimes this is called
“green hydrogen” versus “brown hydrogen.” We need a way to make hydrogen that is clean and we need a way to
transport it that is technically feasible. Ammonia is the only carbon-free hydrogen carrier we can make today.
It can be feedstock for hydrogen production as it is easily created using the freed hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen. Ocean Thermal
Energy Conversion (OTEC) can provide the clean electricity needed to do this. Those not from the corn belt
might not be familiar with ammonia, a common fertilizer and potential fuel. But Iowa alone dispenses 1.5 million tons per year from
its 800 filling stations. The total national pipeline network for ammonia spans 3,100 miles and petroleum pipelines can be easily
converted to expand that distance. Ammonia works as a fuel in everything from converted six cylinder
Ford engines designed in the 1960s to the latest fuel cell technology, but diesel engines are the easiest to convert. The farm fleet
is already largely diesel, the farmers are trained to handle ammonia safely, and the coming changes in allowable diesel particulates in
2011 will be the driver that gets farm vehicles moving to ammonia fuel first. There are several visible renewable ammonia production
methods in development today involving wind, hydroelectric, and solar power. OTEC receives much less coverage, despite its many
technical and political advantages. What is OTEC? The ocean's surface in the Gulf of Mexico can be eighty degrees in the summer.
Three thousand feet below the surface the temperature hovers around forty degrees all year. OTEC is the process of producing
electricity from the energy generated as heat transfers from one temperature to the other. Although the temperature difference in one
gallon of water would only be worth about 300 hundred BTUs, multiplying that by a functionally unlimited supply would provide a
great deal of usable energy. Steam contains enough energy to directly drive a turbine to generate electricity, but this temperature
differential between tropical surface water and deep ocean water is a different type, known as low quality heat. A process called the
Binary Rankine Cycle is used to capture and concentrate the heat, and then transfer it to a working fluid that is used to drive a turbine.
The sun only shines during the day, and wind energy sites are considered excellent if they produce 40 percent of the time, but this
temperature differential is always there. OTEC, producing day and night, will be as solid as a Pacific
Northwest hydroelectric facility once put into operation. There have been onshore OTEC tests done in Hawaii
but the natural domain for this clean energy source will be the Gulf of Mexico and an area southwest
of San Diego. The Gulf of Mexico is the right place to start for a variety of reasons. That ammonia pipeline network
centered in the state of Iowa has its roots in Louisiana, where ammonia brought into the U.S. from
Trinidad begins its journey to the fields of the Midwest. The Gulf of Mexico has been home to oil production
for the last sixty years and hosts plenty of platforms, many of which will be falling out of use as various fields
are played out. There are several styles of deepwater platform, and not all of them are amenable to conversion, but there will be plenty
of construction work for companies currently servicing the oil industry as the change is made to ammonia as a fuel.
Hydrogen tech exists—just need fuel development
Squatriglia 2011(Chuck, Wired, April 22, "Discovery Could Make Fuel Cells Much Cheaper",
http://www.wired.com/2011/04/discovery-makes-fuel-cells-orders-of-magnitude-cheaper/)
One of the biggest issues with hydrogen fuel cells, aside from the lack of fueling infrastructure, is the high
cost of the technology. Fuel cells use a lot of platinum, which is frightfully expensive and one reason we’ll pay $50,000 or so
for the hydrogen cars automakers say we’ll see in 2015.¶ That might soon change. Researchers at Los Alamos National
Laboratory have developed a platinum-free catalyst in the cathode of a hydrogen fuel cell that uses carbon, iron
and cobalt. That could make the catalysts “two to three orders of magnitude cheaper,” the lab says, thereby
significantly reducing the cost of fuel cells. ¶ Although the discovery means we could see hydrogen fuel cells in a wide variety of
applications, it could have the biggest implications for automobiles.¶ Despite the auto industry’s focus on hybrids,
plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles — driven in part by the Obama administration’s love of cars with cords — several
automakers remain convinced hydrogen fuel cells are the best alternative to internal combustion.¶
Hydrogen offers the benefits of battery-electric vehicles — namely zero tailpipe emissions —
without the drawbacks of short range and long recharge times. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles;
they use a fuel cell instead of a battery to provide juice. You can fill a car with hydrogen in minutes, it’ll go about 250 miles or so and
the technology is easily adapted to everything from forklifts to automobiles to buses.
Oil shortages causes great power wars and extinction
Henderson 2007 (Bill, Besline Research CEO/President/consultant,, “Climate Change, Peak Oil,
and Nuclear War,” Countercurrents, February 24, http://www.countercurrents.org/cchenderson240207.htm)
Damocles had one life threatening sword hanging by a thread over his head. We have three: The awakening public now know that
climate change is real and human caused but still grossly underestimate the seriousness of the danger, the increasing probability of
extinction, and how close and insidious this danger is - runaway climate change, the threshold of which, with carbon cycle time lags,
we are close to if not upon. A steep spike in the price of oil, precipitated perhaps by an attack on Iran or Middle East instability
a shock
coming at the end of cheap oil but before major development of alternative energy
economies could mean the end of civilization as we know it. And there is a building new cold war
with still potent nuclear power Russia and China reacting to a belligerent, unilateralist
America on record that it will use military power to secure vital resources and to not allow
any other country to threaten it's world dominance. The world is closer to a final, nuclear,
world war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 with a beginning arms
race and tactical confrontation over weapons in space and even serious talk of pre-emptive nuclear attack.
These three immediate threats to humanity, to each of us now but also to future
generations, are inter-related, interact upon each other, and complicate any possible
approach to individual solution. The fossil fuel energy path has taken us to a way of life that
is killing us and may lead to extinction for humanity and much of what we now recognize as
nature
spreading the insurgency to Saudi Arabia, could lead to an economic dislocation paralyzing the global economy. Such
Advantage ( )—Warming
OTEC solves both power plants and vehicle emissions—key to reduce CO2
Magesh 2010 (R., Coastal Energ Pvt, "OTEC TEchnology - A World of Clean Energy and
Water," World Congress on Engineering, Vol II, June 30)
Scientists all over the world are making predictions about the ill effects of Global warming and its consequences on the mankind.
Conventional Fuel Fired Electric Power Stations contribute nearly 21.3% of the Global
Green House Gas emission annually. Hence, an alternative for such Power Stations is a must to
prevent global warming. One fine alternative that comes to the rescue is the Ocean thermal energy conversion
(OTEC) Power Plant, the complete Renewable Energy Power Station for obtaining Cleaner and Greener Power. Even though the
concept is simple and old, recently it has gained momentum due to worldwide search for clean continuous energy sources to replace
the fossil fuels. The design of a 5 Megawatt OTEC Pre-commercial plant is clearly portrayed to brief the OTEC technical feasibility
along with economic consideration studies for installing OTEC across the world. OTEC plant can be seen as a combined Power Plant
and Desalination plant. Practically, for every Megawatt of power generated by hybrid OTEC plant, nearly 2.28 million litres of
desalinated water is obtained every day. Its value is thus increased because many parts of the globe are facing absolute water scarcity.
OTEC could produce enough drinking water to ease the crisis drought-stricken areas. The water can be used for local agriculture and
industry, any excess water being given or sold to neighboring communities. Index Terms—Desalinated water, Ocean Temperature
Differences, Rankine Cycle, Renewable Energy. I. INTRODUCTION CEAN thermal energy conversion is a hydro energy conversion
system, which uses the temperature difference that exists between deep and shallow waters in tropical seas to run a heat engine. The
economic evaluation of OTEC plants indicates that their commercial future lies in floating plants of approximately 100 MW capacity
for industrialized nations and smaller plants for small-island-developing-states (SIDS). The operational data is needed to earn the
support required from the financial community and developers. Considering a 100 MW (4-module) system, a 1/5-scaled version of a
25 MW module is proposed as an appropriate size. A 5 MW precommercial plant is directly applicable in some SIDS. OTEC works
on Rankine cycle, using a low-pressure turbine to generate electric power. There are two general types of OTEC design: closed-cycle
plants utilize the evaporation of a working fluid, such as ammonia or propylene, to drive the turbinegenerator, and open-cycle plants
use steam from evaporated R. Magesh is with Coastal Energen Pvt. Ltd., Chennai 600 006, Tamilnadu, India (e-mail:
wellingtonmagesh@ gmail.com). sea water to run the turbine. Another commonly known design, hybrid plants, is a combination of
the two. In fact, the plants would cool the ocean by the same amount as the energy extracted from them. Apart from power generation,
an OTEC plant can also be used to pump up the cold deep sea water for air conditioning and refrigeration, if it is brought back to
shore. In addition, the enclosed sea water surrounding the plant can be used for aquaculture. Hydrogen
produced by
subjecting the steam to electrolysis during the OTEC process can fuel hybrid automobiles,
provided hydrogen can be transported economically to sea shore. Another undeveloped opportunity is the potential to mine ocean
water for its 57 elements contained in salts and other forms and dissolved in solution. The
initial capital cost of OTEC
power station would look high, but an OTEC plant would not involve the wastetreatment or
astronomical decommissioning costs of a nuclear facility. Also, it would offset its expense
through the sale of the desalinated water.
OTEC is key—it provides baseload power, has the capability to power the globe
Blue Rise 2012(BlueRise, technology provider in the Ocean Energy Market, "Ocean Thermal
Energy Conversion", http://www.bluerise.nl/technology/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion/)
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a marine renewable energy technology that
harnesses the solar energy absorbed by the oceans. OTEC generates electricity by
exchanging heat with the warm water from the ocean surface and with the cold water from
the deep ocean. The exchanged heat drives a Rankine Cycle, which converts it to electricity.
The technology is viable primarily in equatorial areas where the year-round temperature
differential is at least 20 degrees Celsius. One of the main advantages when comparing OTEC
to other renewables, such as wind and solar energy, is the fact that OTEC is a baseload
source, available day and night. This is a big advantage for tropical islands that typically
have a small, isolated, electric grids, not capable of handling a large share of intermittent
power. The potential of OTEC is vast. One square meter of Ocean surface area on average
receives about 175 watts of solar irradiation. The total amount of globally received solar power
is therefore about 90 petawatts. This is over 6,000 times the total global energy usage. If we
exploit just of fraction of that energy, we have enough to power the world. Today’s
advanced offshore industry provides sufficient know-how for deployment and operation in
the harsh oceanic environment. Offering a continuous and environmentally clean operation,
OTEC is an attractive alternative form of energy.
It sequesters enough carbon to end climate change
Barry 2008 (Christopher, Naval Architect and Co-Chair of the Society of Naval Architects and
Marine Engineers, “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and CO2 Sequestration,” July 1,
http://renewenergy.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion-and-co2sequestration/)
However, deep cold water is laden with nutrients. In the tropics, the warm surface waters are lighter than the cold
water and act as a cap to keep the nutrients in the deeps. This is why there is much less life in the tropical ocean than in coastal waters
upwelling is off the coast
of Peru, where the Peru (or Humboldt) Current brings up nutrient laden waters. In this area, with lots
of solar energy and nutrients, ocean fertility is about 1800 grams of carbon uptake per
square meter per year, compared to only 100 grams typically. This creates a rich fishery, but most of
the carbon eventually sinks to the deeps in the form of waste products and dead
microorganisms. This process is nothing new; worldwide marine microorganisms currently sequester
about forty billion metric tonnes of carbon per year. They are the major long term sink for
carbon dioxide. In a recent issue of Nature, Lovelock and Rapley suggested using wave-powered
pumps to bring up water from the deeps to sequester carbon. But OTEC also brings up
or near the poles. The tropical ocean is only fertile where there is an upwelling of cold water. One such
prodigious amounts of deep water and can do the same thing. In one design, a thousand cubic
meters of water per second are required to produce 70 MW of net output power. We can make estimates of fertility enhancement and
sequestration, but a guess is that an OTEC
plant designed to optimize nutrification might produce
10,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide sequestration per year per MW. The recent challenge by
billionaire Sir Richard Branson is to sequester one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year in order to
halt global warming, so an aggressive OTEC program, hundreds of several hundred
MW plants might meet this.
Warming is real and anthropogenic—the debate is over
Prothero 2012(Donald, Professor of Geology at Occidental College and Lecturer in Geobiology
at the California Institute of Technology, March 1, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and
Human Caused", EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are
numerous lines of evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase. Carbon
dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not
one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et 3Í. (1999) compiled
the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and direct
measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past
century stands out like a sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and
straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that
climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last
Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the
slight cooling of the Little Ice Age in the 1700s and 1800s. But the
magnitude and rapidity of the warming
represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing,
the timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first
began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning
an unprecedented amount of coal, gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps. The polar icecaps are
thinning and breaking up at an alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one
of the first humans to fly over the North Pole in summer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been
frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe longer),'' but now the entire ice
sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less them half of the Arctic
will be ice covered in the summer.^ As one can see from watching the news, this is an ecological disaster
for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4
million people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February-March
2002, the Larsen B ice shelf—over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica.
The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3 million years, and even the
warmest periods of the last 10,000 years—yet it and nearly all the other thick
ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic
are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers. Glaciers are all
retreating at the highest rates ever documented. Many of those glaciers, along with snow
melt, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater
that the populations below the mountains depend upon—yet this fresh water supply is
vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia (especially India) that
depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost
that once remained solidly frozen even in the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the
Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is
catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost, but as it thaws, the permafrost releases
huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the major contributors to global
warming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing
thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year,
surpassing the previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant
populations are being devastated all over the globe as their environments change.^ Many animals respond
by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about disease-bearing
mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea
Level Rise. All that melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea levels to rise, as it
has many times in the geologic past. At present, the sea level is rising about 3-4 mm per year, more than ten times
the rate of 0.10.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that
the sea level was virtually unchanged over the past 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A
few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most scientists
predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would
drown many of the world's low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such
as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above
the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else.' Even a
small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large
waves of a storm surge (as
do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level
rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world's coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous,
Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned. Most of the world's population lives in
low-elevation coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,
D.C., Miami, and Shanghai. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water
with such a sea level rise. If all the glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past
greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level would rise by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would
flood, so you could dock an ocean liner in Cairo, Illinois. Such a sea level rise would drown nearly every
coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and
Paris. All that would remain would be the tall landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and
happened with Hurricane Katrina), which could
the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these drowned cities would lie deep underwater.
Warming causes extinction - a preponderance of evidence proves it's real,
anthropogenic, and outweighs other threats
Deibel 2007 (Terry, "Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic of American Statecraft," Conclusion:
American Foreign Affairs Strategy Today)
Finally, there
is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature, which,
is the threat of global warming to the stability of the climate
upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of
this threat for three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through
probability to near certainty. Indeed not one of more than 900 articles on climate change
published in refereed scientific journals from 1993 to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming
is occurring. “In legitimate scientific circles,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert, “it is virtually impossible to find evidence
of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming.” Evidence from a vast international
scientific monitoring effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports
shows: an international panel predicts “brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the
planet over the next century”; climate change could “literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps
though far in the future, demands urgent action. It
and aid the spread of cholera and malaria”; “glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster than expected,
and…worldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago”; “rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a
significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes”; “NASA scientists have concluded from direct temperature
measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second”; “Earth’s warming climate is estimated
to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year” as disease spreads; “widespread bleaching
from Texas to Trinidad…killed broad swaths of corals” due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. “The world is slowly
disintegrating,” concluded Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. “They call it climate change…but we
just call it breaking up.” From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution,
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are
accelerating toward 400 ppm, and by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric
CO2 lasts about a century, so there is no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for
significant global warming; the only debate is how much and how serous the effects will be. As the
newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of 1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread
of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction, and threatened inundation of low-lying
countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the Greenland and West Antarctic
ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolina’s
outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.
Another catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps
the winter weather in Europe far warmer than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage
to the United States alone from moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent
of GDP. But the most frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive
feedback from the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes
hotter surface temperatures. Past ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global
temperatures, took place in just decades, even though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Faced with this specter, the best one can conclude is that “humankind’s continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is
akin to playing Russian roulette with the earth’s climate and humanity’s life support system. At worst, says physics professor Marty
Hoffert of New York University, “we’re just going to burn everything up; we’re going to het the atmosphere to the
temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and then everything will collapse.” During the
Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied
States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries but possible end life on this planet. Global warming is the
post-Cold War era’s equivalent of nuclear winter at least as serious and considerably better
supported scientifically. Over the long run it puts dangers form terrorism and traditional military
challenges to shame. It is a threat not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but
potentially to the continued existence of life on this planet.
Independently, CO2 releases cause acidification
Messenger 2012(Stephen, Freelance Author specializing in environmental issues, January 22,
"Study Links Rising Ocean Acidification to CO2 Emissions", http://www.treehugger.com/oceanconservation/rising-ocean-acidification-linked-co2-emissions.html)jn
Earth's oceans may be an inconceivably vast ecosystem home to countless species yet
unknown to science, but a new study reaffirms that they too are susceptible to the damaging
impact of carbon emissions released by humans. According to researchers from the University
of Hawaii, ocean acidity levels in some regions have spiked more quickly in the last 200
years than in the preceding 21 thousand years -- threatening the future existence of some of
the planet's most important marine life. While airborne CO2 emissions are already considered a
key factor to climate change on the planet's surface, researchers say that nearly a third of all
emissions released by humans actually wind up absorbed into the oceans -- and that the resulting
acidification could have devastating effects on aquatic organisms. To measure rises in
acidification, researchers examined the levels of a calcium carbonate called aragonite, an
element essential for the construction of corral reefs and the shells of mollusks. As acidity
levels rise, the levels of aragonite drop, warn University of Hawaii scientists -- and its rate of
decline seems to parallel human's creation of CO2 emissions: Today's levels of aragonite
saturation in these locations have already dropped five times below the pre-industrial range of
natural variability. For example, if the yearly cycle in aragonite saturation varied between 4.7 and
4.8, it varies now between 4.2 and 4.3, which – based on another recent study – may translate into
a decrease in overall calcification rates of corals and other aragonite shell-forming organisms by
15%. Given the continued human use of fossil fuels, the saturation levels will drop further,
potentially reducing calcification rates of some marine organisms by more than 40% of
their pre-industrial values within the next 90 years. "In some regions, the man-made rate of
change in ocean acidity since the Industrial Revolution is hundred times greater than the natural
rate of change between the Last Glacial Maximum and pre-industrial times," says the study's lead
author, Tobias Friedrich.
Ocean acidification will cause extinction
Romm 2012 (Joe Romm, Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress,
March 2, 2012, “Science: Ocean Acidifying So Fast It Threatens Humanity’s Ability to Feed
Itself,” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/02/436193/science-ocean-acidifying-so-fast-itthreatens-humanity-ability-to-feed-itself/)
The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than
they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural pulses of carbon sent
global temperatures soaring, says a new study in Science. The study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of
ocean acidification over this vast time period. “What we’re doing today really stands out,” said lead author Bärbel Hönisch, a
paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “We
know that life during past
ocean acidification events was not wiped out—new species evolved to replace those that died
off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms
we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon.” That’s the news release from a major 21-author Science paper, “The Geological
Record of Ocean Acidification” (subs. req’d). We knew from a 2010 Nature Geoscience study that the oceans are now acidifying 10
times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred. But this study looked back over 300
million and found that “the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place” has put marine life at risk in a frighteningly
unique way: … the current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of
ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 My of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are
entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change. That is to say, it’s not just that acidifying oceans spell marine biological
meltdown “by end of century” as a 2010 Geological Society study put it. We are also warming the ocean and decreasing dissolved
oxygen concentration. That is a recipe for mass extinction. A 2009 Nature Geoscience study found that ocean dead
zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years.“
It’s not too late—but acting now is key
Chestney 2013(Nina, Huffington Post Staff, January 13, " Climate Change Study: Emissions
Limits Could Avoid Damage By Two-Thirds",
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/13/climate-change-study-emissionslimits_n_2467995.html)
The world could avoid much of the damaging effects of climate change this century if greenhouse gas
emissions are curbed more sharply, research showed on Sunday.¶ The study, published in the journal Nature Climate
Change, is the first comprehensive assessment of the benefits of cutting emissions to keep the global temperature rise to within 2
degrees Celsius by 2100, a level which scientists say would avoid the worst effects of climate change. ¶ It found 20 to 65 percent
of the adverse impacts by the end of this century could be avoided.¶ "Our research clearly identifies the
benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions - less severe impacts on flooding and crops are two areas of particular
benefit," said Nigel Arnell, director of the University of Reading's Walker Institute, which led the study. ¶ In 2010, governments agreed
to curb emissions to keep temperatures from rising above 2 degrees C, but current emissions reduction targets are on
track to lead to a temperature rise of 4 degrees or more by 2100.¶ The World Bank has warned more extreme weather
will become the "new normal" if global temperature rises by 4 degrees.¶ Extreme heatwaves could devastate areas from the Middle
East to the United States, while sea levels could rise by up to 91 cm (3 feet), flooding cities in countries such as Vietnam and
Bangladesh, the bank has said.¶ The latest research involved scientists from British institutions including the University of Reading,
the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, as well as Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research.¶ It examined a range of emissions-cut scenarios and their impact on factors including flooding, drought, water availability
and crop productivity. The strictest scenario kept global temperature rise to 2 degrees C with emissions
peaking in 2016 and declining by 5 percent a year to 2050.¶ FLOODING¶ Adverse effects such as declining crop
productivity and exposure to river flooding could be reduced by 40 to 65 percent by 2100 if warming is limited to 2 degrees, the study
said.¶ Global average sea level rise could be reduced to 30cm (12 inches) by 2100, compared to 47-55cm (18-22 inches) if no action to
cut emissions is taken, it said.¶ Some adverse climate impacts could also be delayed by many decades. The global
productivity of spring wheat could drop by 20 percent by the 2050s, but the fall in yield could be delayed until 2100 if strict emissions
curbs were enforced.¶ "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions won't avoid the impacts of climate change altogether of course, but our
research shows it will buy time to make things like buildings, transport systems and agriculture more
resilient to climate change," Arnell said.
Plan
The United States federal government should fund the development of Ocean
Thermal Energy Conversion plants.
Contention ( )—Solvency
Federal funding is key—creating early adaption plants signals to the industry the
technology is effective and solves current investment gaps—federal development is
necessary to develop a regulatory scheme
Meyer, Cooper and Varley 2011(Laurie, Dennis, and Robert, Lockhheed Martin, September,
"Are We There Yet? A Developer's Roadmap to OTEC Commercialization",
http://hinmrec.hnei.hawaii.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/OTEC-Road-to-CommercializationSeptember-2011-_-LM.pdf)
In 2006, Makai Ocean Engineering was awarded a small business innovative research (SBIR) contract from the Office of Naval
Research (ONR) to investigate the potential for OTEC to produce nationally-significant quantities of hydrogen in at- sea floating
plants located in warm, tropical waters. Realizing the need for larger partners to actually commercialize OTEC, Makai approached
Lockheed Martin to renew their previous relationship and determine if the time was ready for OTEC. And so in 2007, Lockheed
Martin resumed our OTEC journey and became a subcontractor to Makai to support their SBIR. Lockheed Martin separately began to
engage with Makai Ocean Engineering and others to collectively review the work that was done over the decades to commercialize
OTEC, a dream kept alive by Joe Van Ryzin, Luis Vega, CB Panchal, Bob Cohen, Jim Anderson, Hans Krock, and others. Developing
the envisioned vast marine-industrial sector supporting affordable commercial OTEC applications (Stage 5) required conducting Stage
2 proofs of concepts for any new technology, deploying a pilot facility (Stage 3), and building the first commercial plant (Stage 4). We
developed a vision, commercialization
roadmap, and technology strategy focused on what we saw as the
primary risks and hurdles to scaling OTEC to utility applications. Our vision (Fig. 4) began with the need to
field an integrated pilot plant to enable our move to Stage 4 - commercial market entrée to electric
utilities in locations with existing high costs of electricity. We expect that as more plants are fielded, we will move
down the learning curve and see decreasing unit costs, eventually enabling entrée to lower cost electricity
markets. Initial market entree requires larger plants due to OTEC economics. Smaller plants may eventually become affordable, but in
the near future, small plants will need to be subsidized. As electricity generation becomes established and progress is made toward
Stage 5, larger OTEC plants “grazing” in the open oceans will be developed to produce energy carriers and/or synthetic fuels. These
plants will have the potential to begin to offset transportation fluids. Achieving our vision required us to understand technology
solutions and develop realistic cost and schedule estimates to determine whether OTEC commercialization could yet be realized.
Based on assessments, we developed our commercialization roadmap to provide another view of our commercialization plan (Fig. 5).
Though much technology and system work exists, much has also changed since the 1970s. We identified a number of technology
development/ demonstration tasks to reduce remaining risk. However, successful
risk reduction is not the only
barrier for commercialization. We needed to address the Valley-of- Death, finding funds to
build a pilot facility large enough to convince investors and Lockheed Martin management we could be
successful at commercial utility scales. We believe an integrated megawatt scale pilot plant is
still needed to obtain the large amounts of private financing needed for commercial, utility scale OTEC plants. Our early focus
was on a 10 megawatt (MW) floating design. We viewed scaling 10 MW up to an initial commercial 100 MW plant as a reasonable
step with acceptable risk for the private financing requirements. The
pilot plant serves several purposes and
addresses multiple stakeholder concerns. It provides an integrated system demonstration of
the technology. When connected to a local grid, it provides the utility with the opportunity to ensure
baseload OTEC power performs as expected. The pilot plant allows measurement of
environmental parameters so the regulatory agencies can understand and assess how larger,
commercial plants will operate. The pilot plant will also enable NOAA, the federal agency with OTEC
licensing authority, to fine tune their regulatory process. The pilot project will validate cost and schedule plans so
both industry and financial communities can extrapolate results to commercial projects. Since no commercial OTEC plants are in
operation today, the
pilot plant will provide the opportunity to validate estimate of operations &
maintenance (O&M) requirements. Finally, a pilot plant will provide public relations and community education
opportunities about this new renewable resource. We developed sufficient confidence and optimism to invest in tasks that would
refine our design. Along the way, we “picked up new friends,” companies that provided key skills and credibility to make real
progress. Complementing our Lockheed Martin / Makai Ocean Engineering team (Fig. 6), we’ve added companies with expertise in
the offshore industry, naval architecture, ocean engineering, OTEC systems, composites, and the environment. The primary technical
challenges included heat exchanger optimization, affordable and survivable cold water pipes at 10m+ diameter and 1km length, stable
and affordable ocean platform concepts, and affordable and efficient system designs. We invested in heat exchanger design efforts to
address performance, corrosion, and producibility (Fig. 7). A companion test program focused on understanding the behavior of
candidate alloys in both warm and cold seawater was devised by Makai. Today we have over a year of exposure for hundreds of
samples. To confirm performance estimates for our HX designs, we have conducted testing at both small scale (laboratory) (Fig. 8)
and large scale at NELHA (Fig. 9) using multiple working fluids and a range of representative environmental operating conditions. A
separate paper at this conference addresses more details. We identified a survivable, lower cost composite cold water pipe solution
that could be fabricated on the platform to reduce deployment challenges (Fig. 10). Teamed with the DoE, we validated the composite
pipe fabrication approach and key elements of the composite tooling (Fig. 11). Teamed with the USN, our team addressed the
challenging interfaces between that composite pipe and the steel platform structure (Fig. 12). Future plans include integration of the
full pipe fabrication system for a full scale land based demonstration. We surveyed the offshore industry to understand the state of the
because of the
progress in the offshore oil and gas industry moving into deeper and deeper operational
environments, many of what were challenges in the 1980s are no longer viewed by the industry as
art in large stable floating structures for offshore deepwater applications (Fig. 13). As one might expect,
technology challenges today. However, these deepwater technologies have been exquisitely engineered to address oil and gas
challenges which don’t necessarily plague OTEC and hence are not necessarily cost optimized for our application. Our team has
worked hard to understand the applicability of existing offshore standards in the ultimate design of an OTEC system, and we have
begun working with certification and classification experts focused on safety of operations as well as NOAA and environmental
experts to ensure our design addresses key ecological concerns. III. ARE WE THERE YET ? We’re making progress. Capital
cost is the primary challenge. Since we believe private financing will require a substantial
demonstration to show performance, validate environmental predictions, confirm cost and
schedule estimates, and collect operational data our focus has been on a pilot plant. But we face
a conundrum – a pilot plant will be a “small” OTEC plant; small OTEC plants aren’t economic. We have therefore
focused on federal support for a pilot plant program. Unfortunately, today’s budget woes challenge the
ability of the federal government to support a substantial demonstration.
OTEC is feasible—new tech developments solve design issues
McCallister and McLaughlin 2012(Captain Michael, Senior Engineer with Sound and Sea
Technology, Commander Steve, Critical Infrastructure Programs Manager at Sound and Sea
Technology, January, "Renewable Energy from the Ocean", U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings,
Vol. 138, Issue 1, EBSCO)
The well-known OTEC operating principles date to the original concept proposed by Jacques-Arséne d'Arsonval in 1881. OTEC
recovers solar energy using a thermodynamic cycle that operates across the temperature difference between warm surface water and
cold deep water. In the tropics, surface waters are above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, while at depths of about 1,000 meters water
temperatures are just above freezing. This gradient provides a differential that can be used to transfer energy from the warm surface
waters and generate electricity. For a system operating between 85 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature differential yields a
maximum thermodynamic Carnot cycle efficiency of 9.2 percent. Although this is considered low efficiency for a power plant, the
"fuel" is free. Hence, the real challenge is to build commercial-scale plants that yield competitively priced electricity. Overcoming
Previous attempts to develop a viable and practical OTEC commercial power system
suffered from several challenges. The low temperature delta requires large seawater flows to yield utility scale outputs.
Barriers
Therefore, OTEC plants must be large. Thus, they will also be capital-intensive. As plant capacity increases, the unit outlay becomes
more cost-effective due to economy of scale. Survivable
cold-water pipes, cost-efficient heat exchangers,
and to a lesser extent offshore structures and deep-water moorings represent key technical
challenges. However, developments in offshore technologies, new materials, and fabrication
and construction processes that were not available when the first serious experimental
platforms were developed in the 1970s now provide solutions. When located close to shore, an OTEC plant
can transmit power directly to the local grid via undersea cable. Plants farther from shore
can also produce power in the form of energy carriers like hydrogen or ammonia, which can be used
both as fuel for transportation and to generate power ashore. In agricultural markets, reasonably priced, renewable-based ammonia can
displace natural gas in fertilizer production. Combined with marine algae aqua-culture programs, OTEC plants can also produce
carbon-based synthetic fuels. OTEC facilities can be configured to produce fresh water, and, from a military perspective, system
platforms can also serve as supply bases and surveillance sites. Facing Reality Availability of relatively "cheap" fossil fuels limits
societal incentives to change and makes energy markets difficult to penetrate. However, the realization of "peak oil" (the theoretical
upper limit of global oil production based on known reserves), ongoing instability in Middle East political conditions, adversarial oilsupply partners, and concerns over greenhouse-gas buildup and global warming all contribute to the need for renewable energy
solutions. An assessment of OTEC technical readiness by experts at a 2009 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
workshop indicated that a 10 megawatt (MW) floating OTEC facility is technically feasible today, using current design,
manufacturing, and installation technologies. While readiness and scalability for a 100 MW facility were less clear, the conclusion
was that experience gained during the construction, deployment, and operation of a smaller pilot plant would be a necessary step in
OTEC commercialization. The Navy now supports the development of OTEC, with the goal of reducing technical risks associated
with commercialization.
New tech makes OTEC cost competitive
Ferris 2012(David, Forbes Staff, March 31, "Market for Deep Ocean Energy Heats Up",
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidferris/2012/03/31/market-for-deep-ocean-energy-starts-to-heatup/)
Scientists have entertained the idea of OTEC since the 19th Century and Lockheed Martin created
a working model during the 1970s energy crisis . But the budding market withered in the 1980s as
fuel prices dropped. Now, with energy prices rising again, OTEC is back. Ted Johnson, a
veteran of some early Lockheed experiments, is a senior vice president at OTE Corporation.
Johnson told me that OTEC systems are becoming cost competitive because the technology
for pipes, heat exchangers and other equipment has improved greatly, thanks in part to
innovations by the oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, creating electricity on remote islands is
expensive as ever.
Solvency
EXT—Pilot PlantsDevelopment
Development of demonstration plants is key to overcome misinformation and build
investor confidence
OTEC Foundation 2012(May 21, "Role of the OTEC foundation within the spectrum of
opinions about OTEC", http://www.otecnews.org/2012/05/role-of-the-otec-foundation-withinthe-spectrum-of-opinions-about-otec/)
The concept of OTEC is more than a century old and has been successfully demonstrated on
small scales up to a quarter of a megawatt (MW). Despite being technically feasible, to date,
OTEC remained in a demonstration phase and still is largely overlooked in comparison with
other renewable energy sources, like wind and solar energy. The unfamiliarity of OTEC and
misconceptions about the OTEC concept have slowed the development of interest by
industry and government. Also, due to a lack of factual information, OTEC discussions
suffer from a lot of subjectivity of opinion that doesn’t do good to the credibility of OTEC.
As a result, many uninformed opinions, conjectures, and misconceptions about OTEC have been
published. Dr. Robert Cohen, Ocean thermal energy specialist and former program manager
Ocean Thermal Energy at the Department of Energy, wrote an article about this topic on his
website and called it the “awareness gap”. The OTEC foundation aims to prevent this from
happening in the future. The foundation has the essential purpose of centralizing and organizing
the current scattered information on the technology, providing factual OTEC information and
making sure that OTEC development is accelerated by bringing all the different parties together.
The OTEC foundation believes MW scale, pre-commercial pilot projects are needed to cross
the knowledge gap, gain experience and evaluate the challenges with larger commercial
OTEC facilities. Like every other method of generating power, OTEC will not be entirely
innocent of environmental consequences and the only way to assess these possible impacts is
through pilot plants. Advancing the technology based on these pilot projects will pave the
road for commercial development. Last but not least, the OTEC foundation believes OTEC has
the potential to become a significant contributor to the future energy mix offering competitive and
more sustainable electricity production.
A demonstration plant is key to spur investment
Blanchard 2011(Whitney, Energy Specialist, Contractor to the NOAA OCRM, Last date
referenced, "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Contribution to Energy",
http://www.stakeholderforum.org/fileadmin/files/EnergyOTEC%20Contribution%20to%20Energy%20%28W.Blanchard%29.pdf)
Despite ongoing efforts, OTEC has not yet been demonstrated at a commercial scale
worldwide. The Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition released a “U.S. Marine and Hydrokinetic
Technology Roadmap” (OREC 2011) describing the issues for the industry and the path to
commercialization by 2030. While OTEC is not specifically mentioned as a marine and
hydrokinetic technology, the key factors to commercialization are the same: 1. Technology
research and development 2. Policy issues 3. Siting and permitting 4. Environmental research 5.
Market development 6. Economic and financial issues 7. Grid integration 8. Education and
workforce training. The roadmap suggests a phased approach to commercialization
beginning with demonstration and pilot projects which are pre-commercial and grid
connected moving towards commercialization. OTEC has remained in the demonstration
phase. The onshore experimental in the 1990s produced 215 kilowatts of net electricity (Vega
2002/2003), however, commercial-scale facilities are designed at 100 megawatts (i.e., 100,000
kilowatts). There is a need of a pilot project to validate OTEC technology developments.
OTEC technology is feasible at this scale (e.g., less than 10 megawatts) using current designs,
materials, manufacturing, and deployment techniques; however, there is a need for further
research, development, testing and evaluation for the commercial-scale OTEC facility (CRRC
2009). OTEC designers, future customers, financiers, and regulators need validation of the
economic models, technical performance, and environmental performance from a pilot plant
prior to commercial scale development (Bedard R. 2010). The cost is what remains a challenge;
for example, the Lockheed Martin 10 megawatt pilot plant is estimated to cost $230-$250 million
(Lockheed 2011).
Developing a primary commercial scale plant causes accelerated growth of OTEC
Cohen 2010(Robert, Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, February 16,
"RESPONSE TO COMMENTS RE OCEAN THERMAL ENERGY POSTED ON THE RSQUARED ENERGY BLOG", http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/02/22/answeringquestions-on-otec-part-ii/)
The next step will be to model an array of commercial plants located around markets such as
Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Florida. Finally, as more plants are placed in operation, global models
will be needed to assess any concerns about large global ocean currents. As a fleet of ocean
thermal plants and plantships emerges, data will become available to validate models and
assumptions, and the parameters needed for such forecasting will start becoming available. Much
will depend upon how these plants and plantships are developed, deployed, and operated—such
as how their effluent seawater is discharged—and upon the degree of implementation of this
technology. Those details will evolve with time and are presently rather unpredictable, since there
are too many parameters, imponderables, and unknowns to reach valid conclusions in these areas.
The evolution of ocean thermal technology from a concept to a commercial reality will
probably proceed cautiously and gradually at first, then accelerate. During the initial
phases of that process—sort of a shakedown cruise—much will be learned operationally about
how to properly handle the seawater intakes and effluents, among other environmental aspects.
And, during that gradual commercial introduction of the technology, licensing requirements
ought to cautiously ensure that these early plants be operated responsibly.
A2: Not Cost Competitive
OTEC is cost competitive without including water and food production
Kobayashi 2002 (Hiroki, Corporate Director for Hitachi Zosen Corporation at the Forum on
Desalination Using Renewable Energy, “Water from the Ocean with OTEC,” Forum on
Desalination using Renewable Energy, October 15, http://www.ioes.sagau.ac.jp/FDE2002/02_Hitachi%20Zosen(f).pdf)
Advanced studies
made thus far on thermal cycle and heat exchangers have brought promising results of far
improved efficiency of OTEC system as a whole. Although the efficiency of the system itself varies depending
It goes without saying that economics is one of the key elements for verification of OTEC power plant.
upon temperature conditions, the latest heat cycle so called “Uehara cycle” using ammonia/water mixture fluid as working medium
can attain a 30~50% higher efficiency as compared to Rankine cycle. Thanks to the highly effective plate heat exchanges newly
developed by Saga University, the
power consumption of pumps for cold and warm seawater can be
lowered to 30~40% of the conventional case. Considering all new achievements, we can
easily predict the latest OTEC technology will produce twice as much net power from the
same heat source as the conventional OTEC. In addition to such great improvement of the capability, the
reduction of cold depth water quantity with advanced condenser provides smaller sized
configuration of piping for DOW riser piping, and thus the economical performance is
much improved. Various accounting models have been applied to determine the cost for the OTEC system. As example of trial
calculation, the cost of electricity generated by the OTEC is estimated by NIOT (India), who is now proceeding with an experimental
OTEC plant, as shown in Table 1. According to several accounting models, it has
been determined that for a
large plant of 50~100MW, the unit cost would be competitive with a coal-fired
power station,
while for a small plant of 1~5MW the unit cost would be about the same or less than that of a diesel power
station. However
OTEC is valuable not only in power generating, but in additional activities.
The expected quantities of main by-products of OTEC are shown in Table 2. In case of applying 20m3/day mineral
water production facility with OTEC, for example, total amount of mineral water output is
estimated at approx. 600 million JP¥ per year based on unit price of 100 JP¥ per litter and 85% operation rate.
Its cost effective – five reasons
Avery 1994 (William, B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in
physical chemistry from Harvard, “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” p8)
The small value of the OTEC net efficiency compared with efficiencies typical of heat engines that operate at high temperatures and
pressures has led to assumptions by some energy planners that OTEC power would be too costly to compete with other methods of
power production; however, design
studies supported by research and development testing show that
commercial production of OTEC will be cost effective, for the following reasons: 1. OTEC involves
no costs for fuel or for its preparation and storage. 2. The low pressures and temperatures
of the OTEC cycle permit major reductions in component costs compared with conventional power
systems, which are dependent on high temperature, high pressure, and special materials for efficient operation. 3. OTEC
reliability of operation and freedom from maintenance will be comparable to commercial
refrigeration systems, which typically operate continuously for many years without
shutdown. Operating factors of 85 to 95% are projected, compared with 50 to 70% for coal and nuclear plants. 4. OTEC
operation will be safe and environmentally benign. Ocean basing frees OTEC from the
taxes and delays imposed on conventional power plants by local governments opposed to power generation
in their neighborhoods. 5. OTEC construction will employ facilities, procedures, and components
that are standard in marine construction. Construction time will be 2.5 to 3 years, rather than the
6 to 10 years typical of coal and nuclear plants.
A2: Tech Feasibility
Feasibility concerns have been resolved
Marti, Laboy, and Ruiz 2010(Jose, president of Offshor Infrastructure Associates, Licensed
engineer, Manuel, vice president and director of Offshore Infrastructure Associates, bachelors
degree in chemical engineering, licensed engineer, and Orlando, assistant professor at the
University of Puerto Rico, Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, April 1, "Commercial
Implementation of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion", EBSCO)
Technical Feasibility The nearly 80years of studies and designs since Claude's first attempt to
demonstrate OTEC technology in Cuba in 1930 and the investment of more than $500 million in
R&D and engineering during the mid-1970s to the early 1990s—in the United States alone—
have provided sufficient data to build commercial-scale OTEC plants at the present time,
given the proper economic conditions and the right markets. In 1980, a report prepared by the
RAND Corp. (Santa Monica, California) for the U,S. Department of Energy found that power
systems and platforms required for OTEC plants were within the state of the art.
Subsequent work, such as designs developed by APL in 1980 and GE in 1983, addressed other
issues like the cold-water pipe and the cable used to transport electricity to shore.
Substantial additional progress has occurred since then. For example, submarine cables
capable of serving the needs of OTEC plants have been developed and are in use for other
applications. Techniques for fabricating and installing larger diameter pipes and immersed
tubes developed for other applications, such as offshore oil, ocean outfalls and channel
crossings, are adaptable to OTEC.
Comprehensive studies have determined it feasible
Avery 1994 (William, B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in
physical chemistry from Harvard, “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” p8)
After the initial evaluations of OTEC in 1974 showed its potential to become a significant energy resource, attention
was directed in the U.S. program to the technical areas that would need expansion before a
firm judgment could be made about OTEC practical feasibility. Critics questioned whether a Rankine
cycle could be operated efficiently with the small ∆T available for the OTEC, whether any net power could be produced, whether lowcost heat exchangers could be build that would be durable in seawater, whether fouling of the heat exchanger surfaces would rapidly
degrade performance to unacceptable levels, whether a CWP could be built and deployed, whether interactions between ship motions
and the CWP would be too severe for its survival in storms, whether the OTEC operation would be unacceptable environmentally,
whether energy could be transferred from an OTEC plant to shore, whether suitable sites for OTEC existed, whether one conceptual
design of OTEC should be favored over others, and, finally, whether OTEC plants could be built at a low cost to make OTEC energy
cost competitive with other energy alternatives.
All of these questions were addressed and answered
with positive results in the research and development programs conducted before
funding was terminated . The initial OTEC research and development program was
organized to develop a technology base specifically related to OTEC from which answers to
the critical questions would be expected to emerge. Research programs were established
with the general and program direction listed in table 1-3.
A2: Plants Destroy Storms
Storms won’t affect the plants
Moore 2006(Bill, citing Dr. Hans Krock, founder of OCEES, April 12, "OTEC Resurfaces",
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008)
As to the question of tropical storms like typhoons or hurricanes and the risk they might pose
for offshore OTEC platforms, he explained that these storms form outside of a tropical zone
which extends approximately 4-5 degrees above and below the equator. Platforms operating
within this narrower belt won't have to worry about these powerful storms and the damage
they might cause, though he does plan to engineer for such contingencies.
Design allows sites to withstand storms
Avery 1994 (William, B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in
physical chemistry from Harvard, “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” p44)
OTEC systems must have long operating life (-30 years), including the ability to withstand the
winds, waves, and currents of the most severe storm predicted to occur over a period of 100
years at the site of plant operation (the 100-year storm). Formulas developed by Bretschneider (1979) show that the
100-year storm would produce waves of 8.8 m (29 ft) significant wave heights> in the Atlantic Ocean near the equator, 11.3 m (37 ft)
in the Caribbean near Puerto Rico, and 9.1 m (30 ft) at Hawaiian sites. The
baseline 40-MWe barge and CWP
system is designed to withstand these conditions. A maximum angle of 200 between the platform and CWP at the
junction is allowed in the design. Water tunnel tests of a l/30-scale model of the baseline configuration
confirmed the suitability of the grazing plantship design for the Atlantic site. The tests also showed
that minor fairing and bulkheads would need to be added to resist hurricane waves at the Puerto Rico site. The evaluation
confirmed the soundness and practicality of the concrete barge design (George and Richards, 1980,
1981)7
A2: Biofouling
No impact and designs and tech solve
CRRC 2009(Coastal Response Research Center, a partnership between the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration Office of Response and Restoration and the University of New
Hampshire, November 3, "Technical Readiness of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion",
http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/otec/docs/otectech1109.pdf)
Studies have shown that biofouling on the interior and exterior of the CWP will not
significantly impact the performance of the OTEC plant (C.B. Panchal, 1984). Smooth
interior surfaces of the CWP achieved by coatings and additives mitigate biofouling. The CWP
is designed to last the lifetime of the facility, and with current engineering knowledge and
methods may approach 30 years. Fiber optics will be used to monitor CWP performance and
detect any damage. Fiber optics is a well-understood technology that is regularly used in the
offshore oil industry. The offshore oil industry also has experience in repairing structures at
depth. There are existing monitoring methods to analyze ageing, saturation, and fatigue.
No risk of biofouling – chemical agents prevent damage
Avery 1994 (William, B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in
physical chemistry from Harvard, “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” 36-37.)
The possibility that biofouling of the heat exchangers would quickly degrade OTEC performance was raised as a critical issue at the
beginning of the OTEC program. Investigation
has shown that the seriousness of the problem was
overestimated. Fouling rates are much lower in tropical open-ocean waters suitable for OTEC
operation than in coastal waters, which are rich in marine life; therefore, biocontrol methods are much more
effective for OTEC than for typical marine heat exchangers. Chemical agents can be used in
concentrations that are environmentally safe, and physical methods can be effective at
lower intensities or longer time intervals. One reason for apprehension about the effects of biofouling was a
misconception by many evaluators that the low thermal efficiency of OTEC would make its performance particularly sensitive to a
reduction of heat transfer by biofouling. This is not so. As shown earlier (Section 1.2.2), the percentage reduction in the overall heat
transfer coefficient due to fouling is the same whether ilT is 20 or lOOO°e. It is correct to state that as heat transfer coefficients are
improved by better design, the sensitivity of the performance to biofouling will increase. Beginning in 1978, experiments were
conducted in the Department of Energy program to determine rates of biofouling under conditions typical of OTEC operation in
Hawaii (Pandolfini et al., 1980; Liebert et al., 1981), in the Gulf of Mexico (Little, 1978), and in Puerto Rico (Sasscer et al., 1980). It
was found that fouling would reach unacceptable levels in about 6 weeks without fouling controls; that is, the fouling coefficient, Rf'
would exceed a value of 0.000088 m2 °CfW (0.0005 ft2 h OF/Btu). [The fouling coefficient is the reciprocal of the heat transfer
coefficient, h'b' defined in Eq. (1.2.7).] The research also included tests of a wide variety of control methods, including both physical
and chemical means. As a result of this work, a practical
method of OTEC biofouling control is now
available. It has been shown that injection one parts per billion of chlorine for 1 hid into the
warm-water flow to the evaporator effectively prevents film formation. As of July 1986, heat
exchanger test samples had been exposed to seawater with this chlorine concentration for more than 1000 d, with no significant
reduction in the heat transfer coefficient due to biofouling. The
chlorine added is one-twentieth of the amount
considered environmentally acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. There
was no biofouling in the condenser test samples exposed to cold-water flow; therefore, there was no need for chlorine addition (Berger
and Berger, 1986). Figure 1-12 displays biofouling test results for a typical experiment using warm seawater with chlorine injection,
and for a control run in which fouling was allowed to build without chlorine injection until reached the value 5 x 10-4 m? h OF/Btu,
after which the heat exchanger surface was cleaned and the process repeated. The research and development program also
demonstrated that biofouling can be controlled by physical means, including brushing and ultraviolet and ultrasonic radiation;
however, these methods are less attractive to use and are not likely to be adopted unless chlorine or other biocides are arbitrarily, or as
the result of new evidence, ruled to be unacceptable.
The biofouling program also included studies of the
biology of slime formation on surfaces exposed to seawater. The process involves an initial
phase in which a bacterial film is deposited on the heat exchanger surface. This film
provides sustenance for marine organisms, which gradually build up a layer that covers the
surface. When this stage is reached, growth proceeds at a relatively fast, approximately
constant, rate. Experiments show that the value of Rfis directly proportional to the film thickness (Liebert et al., 1981). Another
important result of the biological investigations is
that no significant differences are found in the organisms
that cause fouling at sites in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Gulf of Mexico. This result gives
confidence that biocontrol measures that are effective in Hawaii will be applicable throughout the tropical ocean area (Sasscer, 1981;
Liebert et al., 1981).
A2: Long Construction Times
Plant construction will only take two years
OCEES, no date (Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems, “Environmental Benefits,”
http://www.ocees.com/mainpages/qanda.html#faq5)
The application of OTEC systems technology to tropical oceanic islands is ready now. As
with any engineering project, the design process has to be adapted to the site and comply with all
applicable requirements. Depending on the time it takes to obtain the various permits, a
typical design and construction period for an island-based otec system is expected to be 18
to 24 months.
Scarcity Advantage
2AC—Water Shortages: Indo-Pak
Indo-Pak water scarcity’s coming – causes escalatory disputes
Privadarshi 2012 (Nitish, lecturer in the department of environment and water management at
Ranchi University in India, “War for water is not a far cry”, June
16,http://www.cleangangaportal.org/node/44)
Such is the deep nexus between water and global warming that the increased frequency of
climate change-driven extreme weather events like hurricanes, droughts and flooding, along
with the projected rise of ocean levels, is likely to spur greater interstate and intrastate
migration- especially of the poor and the vulnerable- from delta and coastal regions to the
hinterland.¶ As the planet warms, water grow scarcer. Global warming will endanger the
monsoon, which effects much greater than those of drought alone-particularly in India given that
70 percent of India’s rainfall comes from the monsoon.¶ The declining snow cover and
receding glaciers in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir could trigger renewed
hostilities between India and Pakistan, neighbouring states in the South Asian region that are at
odds on a host of issues.¶ The two countries share the Indus River, one of the longest rivers in
the world. The river rises in southwestern Tibet and flows northwest through the Himalayas. It
crosses into the Kashmir region, meandering to the Indian and Pakistani administered areas of
the territory.¶ Pakistan and India have long been embroiled in a territorial dispute over Kashmir,
but have so far managed to uphold a World Bank-mediated Indus Water Treaty (IWT) that
provides mechanisms for resolving disputes over water sharing. Any drastic reduction in the
availability of water in the region has the potential of causing a war between the hostile
south Asian neighbors.¶ The Indus water system is the lifeline for Pakistan, as 75 to 80
percent of water flows to Pakistan as melt from the Himalayan glaciers. This glacier melt
forms the backbone of irrigation network in Pakistan, with 90 percent of agricultural land
being fed by the vastly spread irrigation network in Pakistan, one of the largest in the world.
Any disruption of water flow would cause a grave impact on agriculture produce in
Pakistan.¶ The Indus Waters Treaty is a water-sharing treaty between the Republic of India and
Islamic Republic of Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank (then the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development). The treaty was signed in Karachi on September 19, 1960 by
Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President of Pakistan Mohammad Ayub Khan. The
treaty was a result of Pakistani fear that since the source rivers of the Indus basin were in India, it
could potentially create droughts and famines in Pakistan, especially at times of war. However,
India did not revoke the treaty during any of three later Indo-Pakistani Wars.¶ Until now, the
Indus Water Treaty has worked well, but the impact of climate change would test the
sanctity of this treaty. Under the treaty signed in 1960, the two countries also share five
tributaries of the Indus river, namely, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The agreement
grants Pakistan exclusive rights over waters from the Indus and its westward-flowing tributaries,
the Jhelum and Chenab, while the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers were allocated for India’s use.¶
Transboundary water sharing between India and Pakistan will become an extremely
difficult proposition as surface water would become a scarce commodity with the depletion
of water reserves up in the mountains.¶ The sharing of the Ganges waters is a long-standing
issue between India and Bangladesh over the appropriate allocation and development of the water
resources of the Ganges River that flows from northern India into Bangladesh. The issue has
remained a subject of conflict for almost 35 years, with several bilateral agreements and
rounds of talks failing to produce results.
Indo-pak conflict goes nuclear
Zahoor 2011 (Musharaf, researcher at Department of Nuclear Politics, National Defence
University, Islamabad, “Water crisis can trigger nuclear war in South Asia,”
http://www.siasat.pk/forum/showthread.php?77008-Water-Crisis-can-Trigger-Nuclear-War-inSouth-Asia)
South Asia is among one of those regions where water needs are growing disproportionately
to its availability. The high increase in population besides large-scale cultivation has turned
South Asia into a water scarce region. The two nuclear neighbors Pakistan and India share
the waters of Indus Basin. All the major rivers stem from the Himalyan region and pass through
Kashmir down to the planes of Punjab and Sindh empty into Arabic ocean. It is pertinent that the
strategic importance of Kashmir, a source of all major rivers, for Pakistan and symbolic
importance of Kashmir for India are maximum list positions. Both the countries have
fought two major wars in 1948, 1965 and a limited war in Kargil specifically on the Kashmir
dispute. Among other issues, the newly born states fell into water sharing dispute right after
their partition. Initially under an agreed formula, Pakistan paid for the river waters to India,
which is an upper riparian state. After a decade long negotiations, both the states signed Indus
Water Treaty in 1960. Under the treaty, India was given an exclusive right of three eastern rivers
Sutlej, Bias and Ravi while Pakistan was given the right of three Western Rivers, Indus, Chenab
and Jhelum. The tributaries of these rivers are also considered their part under the treaty. It was
assumed that the treaty had permanently resolved the water issue, which proved a nightmare in
the latter course. India by exploiting the provisions of IWT started wanton construction of dams
on Pakistani rivers thus scaling down the water availability to Pakistan (a lower riparian state).
The treaty only allows run of the river hydropower projects and does not permit to construct such
water reservoirs on Pakistani rivers, which may affect the water flow to the low lying areas.
According to the statistics of Hydel power Development Corporation of Indian Occupied
Kashmir, India has a plan to construct 310 small, medium and large dams in the territory.
India has already started work on 62 dams in the first phase. The cumulative dead and live
storage of these dams will be so great that India can easily manipulate the water of
Pakistani rivers. India has set up a department called the Chenab Valley Power Projects to
construct power plants on the Chenab River in occupied Kashmir. India is also constructing
three major hydro-power projects on Indus River which include Nimoo Bazgo power project,
Dumkhar project and Chutak project. On the other hand, it has started Kishan Ganga hydropower
project by diverting the waters of Neelum River, a tributary of the Jhelum, in sheer violation of
the IWT. The gratuitous construction of dams by India has created serious water shortages
in Pakistan. The construction of Kishan Ganga dam will turn the Neelum valley, which is
located in Azad Kashmir into a barren land. The water shortage will not only affect the
cultivation but it has serious social, political and economic ramifications for Pakistan. The
farmer associations have already started protests in Southern Punjab and Sindh against the nonavailability of water. These protests are so far limited and under control. The reports of
international organizations suggest that the water availability in Pakistan will reduce further
in the coming years. If the situation remains unchanged, the violent mobs of villagers across
the country will be a major law and order challenge for the government. The water shortage
has also created mistrust among the federative units, which is evident from the fact that the
President and the Prime Minister had to intervene for convincing Sindh and Punjab provinces on
water sharing formula. The Indus River System Authority (IRSA) is responsible for distribution
of water among the provinces but in the current situation it has also lost its credibility. The
provinces often accuse each other of water theft. In the given circumstances, Pakistan
desperately wants to talk on water issue with India. The meetings between Indus Water
Commissioners of Pakistan and India have so far yielded no tangible results. The recent
meeting in Lahore has also ended without concrete results. India is continuously using delaying
tactics to under pressure Pakistan. The Indus Water Commissioners are supposed to resolve the
issues bilaterally through talks. The success of their meetings can be measured from the fact that
Pakistan has to knock at international court of arbitration for the settlement of Kishan Ganga
hydropower project. The recently held foreign minister level talks between both the countries
ended inconclusively in Islamabad, which only resulted in heightening the mistrust and
suspicions. The water stress in Pakistan is increasing day by day. The construction of dams
will not only cause damage to the agriculture sector but India can manipulate the river water to
create inundations in Pakistan. The rivers in Pakistan are also vital for defense during
wartime. The control over the water will provide an edge to India during war with Pakistan. The
failure of diplomacy, manipulation of IWT provisions by India and growing water scarcity in
Pakistan and its social, political and economic repercussions for the country can lead both
the countries toward a war. The existent A-symmetry between the conventional forces of
both the countries will compel the weaker side to use nuclear weapons to prevent the
opponent from taking any advantage of the situation. Pakistan's nuclear programme is aimed
at to create minimum credible deterrence. India has a declared nuclear doctrine which intends
to retaliate massively in case of first strike by its' enemy. In 2003, India expanded the
operational parameters for its nuclear doctrine. Under the new parameters, it will not only use
nuclear weapons against a nuclear strike but will also use nuclear weapons against a nuclear
strike on Indian forces anywhere. Pakistan has a draft nuclear doctrine, which consists on the
statements of high ups. Describing the nuclear thresh-hold in January 2002, General Khalid
Kidwai, the head of Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division, in an interview to Landau Network, said
that Pakistan will use nuclear weapons in case India occupies large parts of its territory,
economic strangling by India, political disruption and if India destroys Pakistan's forces.
The analysis of the ambitious nuclear doctrines of both the countries clearly points out that
any military confrontation in the region can result in a nuclear catastrophe . The rivers
flowing from Kashmir are Pakistan's lifeline, which are essential for the livelihood of 170
million people of the country and the cohesion of federative units. The failure of dialogue
will leave no option but to achieve the ends through military means.
EXT—Water Stress Now
Water shortages are priming global conflicts—causes instability, terrorism, food
shortages and water wars
Goldenberg 2014(Suzanne, Staffwriter at The Observer, February 8, "Why global water
shortages pose threat of terror and war",
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/09/global-water-shortages-threat-terror-war)
There are other shock moments ahead – and not just for California – in a world where water
is increasingly in short
supply because of growing demands from agriculture, an expanding population, energy production
and climate change.¶ Already a billion people, or one in seven people on the planet, lack access to safe drinking
water. Britain, of course, is currently at the other extreme. Great swaths of the country are drowning in misery, after a series of
Atlantic storms off the south-western coast. But that too is part of the picture that has been coming into sharper focus over 12 years of
the Grace satellite record. Countries at northern latitudes and in the tropics are getting wetter. But those countries at mid-latitude are
running increasingly low on water.¶ "What we see is very much a picture of the wet areas of the Earth getting wetter," Famiglietti said.
"Those would be the high latitudes like the Arctic and the lower latitudes like the tropics. The middle latitudes in between, those are
already the arid and semi-arid parts of the world and they are getting drier."¶ On the satellite images the biggest losses were denoted
by red hotspots, he said. And those red spots largely matched the locations of groundwater reserves. ¶ "Almost all of those red hotspots
correspond to major aquifers of the world. What Grace shows us is that groundwater
depletion is happening at a
very rapid rate in almost all of the major aquifers in the arid and semi-arid parts of the world."¶ The
Middle East, north Africa and south Asia are all projected to experience water shortages over
the coming years because of decades of bad management and overuse.¶ Watering crops, slaking thirst in expanding cities,
cooling power plants, fracking oil and gas wells – all take water from the same diminishing
supply. Add to that climate change – which is projected to intensify dry spells in the coming years – and the world is going to be
forced to think a lot more about water than it ever did before. ¶ The losses of water reserves are staggering. In seven years, beginning in
2003, parts
of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lost 144 cubic
kilometres of stored freshwater – or about the same amount of water in the Dead Sea, according to
data compiled by the Grace mission and released last year.¶ A small portion of the water loss was due to soil drying up because of a
2007 drought and to a poor snowpack. Another share was lost to evaporation from lakes and reservoirs. But the majority of the water
lost, 90km3, or about 60%, was due to reductions in groundwater. ¶ Farmers, facing drought, resorted to pumping out groundwater – at
times on a massive scale. The Iraqi government drilled about 1,000 wells to weather the 2007 drought, all drawing from the same
stressed supply.¶ In south Asia, the losses of groundwater over the last decade were even higher. About 600
million people live on the 2,000km swath that extends from eastern Pakistan, across the hot dry plains of northern India and into
Bangladesh, and the land is the most intensely irrigated in the world. Up to 75%
of farmers rely on pumped
groundwater to water their crops, and water use is intensifying.¶ Over the last decade, groundwater was pumped out 70% faster
than in the 1990s. Satellite measurements showed a staggering loss of 54km3 of groundwater a year. Indian farmers were pumping
their way into a water crisis.¶ The
US security establishment is already warning of potential conflicts
– including terror attacks – over water. In a 2012 report, the US director of national intelligence warned that overuse
of water – as in India and other countries – was a source of conflict that could potentially compromise US national security. ¶ The
report focused on water basins critical to the US security regime – the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Mekong, Jordan, Indus, Brahmaputra
and Amu Darya. It concluded: "During the next 10 years, many
countries important to the United States will experience water
problems – shortages, poor water quality, or floods – that will risk instability and state failure, increase
regional tensions, and distract them from working with the United States."¶ Water, on its own, was unlikely to bring down
governments. But the report warned that
shortages could threaten food production and energy
supply and put additional stress on governments struggling with poverty and social
tensions.¶ Some of those tensions are already apparent on the ground. The Pacific Institute, which studies issues of water
and global security, found a fourfold increase in violent confrontations over water over the last
decade. "I think the risk of conflicts over water is growing – not shrinking – because of increased
competition, because of bad management and, ultimately, because of the impacts of climate change," said Peter Gleick, president of
the Pacific Institute.¶ There are dozens of potential flashpoints, spanning the globe. In the Middle East,
Iranian officials are making contingency plans for water rationing in the greater Tehran area, home to 22 million people. ¶ Egypt has
demanded Ethiopia stop construction of a mega-dam on the Nile, vowing to protect its historical rights to the river at "any cost". The
Egyptian authorities have called for a study into whether the project would reduce the river's flow. ¶ Jordan, which has the third lowest
reserves in the region, is struggling with an influx of Syrian refugees. The country is undergoing power cuts because of water
shortages. Last week, Prince Hassan, the uncle of King Abdullah, warned that a
war over water and energy could be
even bloodier than the Arab spring.¶ The United Arab Emirates, faced with a growing population, has invested in
desalination projects and is harvesting rainwater. At an international water conference in Abu Dhabi last year, Crown Prince General
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said: "For us, water is [now] more important than oil."¶ The chances of countries going to
war over water were slim – at least over the next decade, the national intelligence report said. But it warned ominously: "As water
shortages become more acute beyond the next 10 years, water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage; the use of water
as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives will become more likely beyond 10 years." ¶
6 billion will live in water stressed or scarce locations by 2050
Websdale 2014(Emma, journalist, BS in Conservation Biology, January 14, "By 2050, Half of
World’s Population Will Be “Water Stressed”", http://empowertheocean.com/2050-water-stress/)
Based on a new modeling software, which calculates the ability of global water resources to meet water demands through
2050,
researchers from MIT estimate that approximately 5 billion people—over half of the world’s projected
population—will live in areas where fresh water supplies are scarce.¶ The research also suggests that an
additional 1 billion people, particularly in areas that include the Middle East, Northern Africa, and India, will be living
in places where water demand exceeds surface-water supply.¶ Using their own, new, modeling software—
the MIT Integrated Global System Model Water Resource System (IGSM-WRS)—researchers analyzed the effects of both climate
change and socioeconomic changes on water availability in 282 large global basins. Results show that population and economic
growth are mostly responsible for increased water stress.¶ The model also shows that the effects of climate change—changes in
precipitation and other weather patterns—would limit the water available for irrigation, increasing the demand on world-wide water
resources, particularly in developed countries.¶ “There is a growing need for modeling and analysis like this, which takes a
comprehensive approach by studying the influence of both climatic and socioeconomic changes and their effects on both supply and
demand projections”, says Adam Schlosser, lead author of the study. “Our results underscore this need.” ¶
EXT—Water Shortages Cause War
Water shortages will trigger water conflicts globally.
CSIS 2005 (Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Addressing Our Global Water
Future,” September 30, http://water.csis.org/050928_ogwf.pdf)
Taken together, all of these factors—from the rising imbalance of supply and demand to the
devastating effects of water on human prosperity—point toward a world in which growing
water challenges could ignite the underlying economic forces that may lead to conflict and war
in the future. Such warnings have been voiced by leaders and scholars across the planet—from
U.N. Secretary Generals Kofi Annan and Boutros Boutros Ghali to the U.S. National Intelligence Council. These warnings should
certainly be weighed heavily, but the inevitability of conflict solely over water resources remains uncertain. Historical data on
international interactions regarding water show many more cooperative arrangements than conflicts. In fact, the last incident of fullout war over water occurred 4,500 years ago between two Mesopotamian city-states (Postel and Wolf 2001).
On the other
hand, from 2000-2003, 15 violent conflicts across the world involved water either
directly or indirectly . Twelve of these were related to disputes over the development of shared water resources (Gleick
2004a). While
history gives cause for comfort, increasing water scarcity and declining water
quality across the world certainly present the threat of increased instability and conflict in
the future. Defining the exact nature of that threat is the first step to avoiding unrest. In the future, instability or conflict
related to water supplies will likely take two forms: (1) domestic unrest caused by the
inability of governments to meet the food, industrial, and municipal needs of its citizens, and (2)
hostility between two or more countries—or regions within a country—possibly leading to greater
insecurity or conflict, caused by one party disrupting the water supply of another.
EXT—Central Asia War Impact
Central Asian war escalates
Blank 1998(Stephen, MacArthur Professor of Research at the Strategic Studies Institute of the
US Army War College, May 1, Jane’s Intelligence Review)
Many of the conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict in which third parties
intervene are present in the Transcaucasus. For example, many Third World conflicts generated by
local structural factors have a great potential for unintended escalation. Big powers often feel obliged to rescue
their lesser proteges and proxies. One or another big power may fail to grasp the other side's stakes,
since interests here are not as clear as in Europe. Hence commitments involving the use of nuclear weapons to
prevent a client's defeat are not well established or clear as in Europe. Clarity about the nature of the threat could prevent the kind of
rapid and almost uncontrolled escalation we saw in 1993 when Turkish noises about intervening on behalf of Azerbaijan led Russian
because Turkey is a NATO ally but probably could
not prevail in a long war against Russia - or if it could, would trigger a potential nuclear
blow (not a small possibility given the erratic nature of Russia's declared nuclear strategies)
- the danger of major war is higher here than almost everywhere else.
leaders to threaten a nuclear war in that case. Precisely
EXT—OTEC Solves Water
OTEC key to solve water wars
Michaelis 2008(Dominic, Alex Michaelis, and Trevor COoper-Chadwick, The Daily Telegraph
Staff, January 8, "Could sea power solve the energy crisis? As Gordon Brown steers Britain
towards a nuclear future, Dominic Michaelis, Alex Michaelis and Trevor Cooper-Chadwick
suggest we turn to the oceans instead", Lexis)
It may sound like science fiction, but Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion ( OTEC) is an idea whose time has come. It is based on
the work of Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval, a 19th-century French physicist who thought of using the sea as a giant solar-energy collector.
The theory is very simple: OTEC extracts energy from the difference in temperature between the surface of the sea (up to 29C in the
tropics) and the waters a kilometre down, which are typically a chilly 5C. This powers a "heat engine'': think of a refrigerator in
reverse, in which a temperature difference creates electricity. Claude's efforts to develop a practical version of d'Arsonval's concept
had to be abandoned due to poor weather and a lack of funds. But a modern equivalent would meet much of the world's energy needs,
without generating polluting clouds of carbon and sulphur dioxide. It could
also produce vast quantities of
desalinated water to be shipped to parched areas of the world such as Africa. There are two basic versions
of the technology. The first operates in a "closed cycle'', using warm surface water to heat ammonia, which boils at a low temperature.
This expands into vapour, driving a turbine that produces electricity. Cold water from the depths is used to cool the ammonia,
returning it to its liquid state so the process can start again. The
"open cycle'' version offers the added benefit
of producing drinking water as a by-product. Warm seawater is introduced into a vacuum chamber, in which it
will boil more easily, leaving behind salt and generating steam to turn a turbine. Once it has left the turbine, the steam enters a
condensing chamber cooled by water from the depths, in which large quantities of
desalinated water are produced - 1.2 million litres for every megawatt of energy. A 250MW plant (a sixth of the
capacity of the new coal-fired power station that has just won planning permission in Kent) could produce 300 million
litres of drinking water a day, enough to fill a supertanker. Using electrolysis, it would also be possible to produce hydrogen fuel.
OTEC solves water shortages—It literally results in infinite water
Kobayashi 2002 (Hiroki, Corporate Director for Hitachi Zosen Corporation at the Forum on
Desalination Using Renewable Energy, “Water from the Ocean with OTEC,” Forum on
Desalination using Renewable Energy, October 15, http://www.ioes.sagau.ac.jp/FDE2002/02_Hitachi%20Zosen(f).pdf)
“Century of Water” has come. We, human being, are facing some problems caused by human activities, and ‘water’ is one of the most
important subject for us in coming era. In the subject, by the way, it should be noted that ‘water’ means not salt water but fresh water.
About 70%
of earth’s surface is covered by sea, and 98.5% of water (H2O) on this planet exists
contained in seawater. When sustainable measures to desalinate seawater harmonized with
environment will be developed, we will mostly get the solution to the issue of ‘water’. The
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is the most expected technology utilizing solar
Everybody knows the earth is called “Water planet” because the existence of water brings particularity of the planet.
originated natural energy. We will propose to materialize this unique technology combined with seawater desalination employing
technique and experience that were developed and accumulated in shipbuilding industry. Since
ocean thermal energy is
clean and renewable, and its potential is very huge, a bright future is expected to get infinite
“water” harmoniously from the ocean with the OTEC.
EXT—OTEC Solves Food
Otec enhances fish stocks and develops fertilizer—solves food
Barry 2008 (Christopher, Naval Architect and Co-Chair of the Society of Naval Architects and
Marine Engineers, “Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and CO2 Sequestration,” July 1,
http://renewenergy.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion-and-co2sequestration/)
saying is “we aren’t trying to solve world hunger,” but
we may have. Increased ocean fertility may enhance fisheries substantially. In addition, by using
OTEC energy to make nitrogen fertilizers, we can improve agriculture in the developing
world. OTEC fertilizer could be sold to developing countries at a subsidy in exchange for using the tropic oceans . If we can
solve the challenges of OTEC, especially carbon sequestration, it would seem that the Branson Challenge is met, and
There might be an additional benefit: Another
we have saved the earth, plus solving world hunger . Since President Jimmy Carter originally started
OTEC research in the ’70′s, he deserves the credit. I’m sure he will find a good use for Sir Richard’s check.
EXT—Food Shortages Escalate
Causes global conflict
Messer et al 2000 (Ellen [Marc Cohen and Jashinta D’Costa] Visiting Associate Professor of
Anthropology at Tufts, Research Fellow and Special Assistant to the director general at the
International Food Policy Research, “Armed Conflict and Hunger,” Fall,
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/fall2000/messer1.htm)
After 20 years of optimism, international food and nutrition experts are presenting a more cautious world food outlook (see, for
example, Pinstrup-Andersen, Pandya-Lorch, and Rosegrant, 1997). Although the world as a whole now enjoys a food surplus, over the
next two decades annual growth rates of major cereal crop yields are expected to slow, while global population is expected to grow by
2 billion people. Cultivated land areas are diminishing, and environmental and biological resources are also being degraded and
destroyed. Developing countries also face economic threats to their food security because multilateral trade agreements will likely
reduce food surpluses in the developed countries, raise grain prices, and shrink food aid. Future food security in developing countries
is also menaced by cutbacks in foreign assistance, an increasing proportion of which is now allocated to disaster situations, reducing
the amount available for agricultural research investment. These factors suggest that developing countries will face growing food
deficits and food and nutritional insecurity. They may also face environmental degradation and natural
resource scarcities that will end in greater competition and conflict (Brown and Kane, 1994; Kaplan, 1994).
Several recent studies have proposed a significant link between environmental resource scarcity
and violence (Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1994). This paper expands this proposition to consider significant
linkages among environmental resource scarcities, conflict, food, and hunger. The paper argues that
armed conflicts (those involving more than 1,000 deaths) or "food wars" constitute a significant cause of
deteriorating food scenarios in developing countries. Food wars are defined as wars involving the
use of hunger as a weapon or hunger vulnerability that accompanies or follows from destructive
conflict (Messer, 1990). They have already been shown to be a salient factor in the famines of the
1980s and 1990s (see Bohle, 1993; Messer, 1994; Macrae and Zwi, 1993, 1994; Messer, 1996a). Although geographic
information and famine early warning systems and international food reserves established after the famines of the mid-1970s provide
both timely early warning and a capacity for emergency response, the social disorganization that accompanies
conflict prevents food distribution. Food wars are also a growing cause of chronic
underproduction and food insecurity, where prolonged conflicts prevent farming and marketing
and where land, waterworks, markets, infrastructure, and human communities have been destroyed. The data suggest that most
countries and regions that are food insecure are not hopeless under producers but are experiencing the aftermath of conflicts, political
instability, and poor governance. Their food production capacities are higher than current projections predict. Reciprocally, food
security can help prevent conflict and is essential for sustained and peaceful recovery after wars have ended. A principal source of
conflict lies in lack of food security, as experienced by different households and communities; religious, ethnic, and political groups;
and states. Yet both peace and food security remain elusive for many war-ravaged countries where
decimation or flight of material and human resources make a return to normal food and livelihood
security difficult to achieve.
A2: Water Solved Peacefully
Peaceful arrangements will fail
Radin 2010 (Adam, masters in security studies from the naval postgraduate school, “the security
implications of water: prospects for instability or cooperation in south and central asia”, March,
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA518674)
Water, an issue so important to numerous facets of each state’s economy and overall stability, must not be left to
loosely observed and nonbinding agreements. Tajikistan has even gone as far as to appeal to the United Nations
General Assembly to focus on the “Central Asia water dilemma.”142 In a region that is still developing, and
where the government’s survival rely more on its relations with it people versus its regional
neighbors, domestic needs will continue to trump international cooperation. As Linn notes in his
plan, the need for global actors to take an active role is likely needed in order for sustained cooperation. Additionally, this also
provides an opportunity for Russia to actively insert itself through diplomacy and infrastructural investments, seeing that they still
consider the CARs under their sphere of influence.143 The chapter presents a contrasting case study to South Asia, as in
Central
Asia water is not viewed as a regional security issue, but in terms of fulfilling short-term
domestic needs. Without the looming threat of conflict or significant retribution from
regional neighbors, cooperation is consistently undervalued and abandoned once domestic
pressures increase. The problem with this pattern is that resources will likely continue to deteriorate and
the CARs will continue to be dependent on each other to provide water and energy. Without sustained and flexible cooperation, the
region at the very least will see greater stresses on government to provide for their populations,
leading to domestic and potential regional instability.
A2: Tech Solves Food
Current tech projections fail—only the aff is able to prevent crisis
AgriLife 2014(Texas A&M Agrilife Communications, April 17, "Food shortages could be most
critical world issue by mid-century",
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140417124704.htm)
"For the first time in human history, food
production will be limited on a global scale by the availability of
land, water and energy," said Dr. Fred Davies, senior science advisor for the agency's bureau of food security. "Food issues
could become as politically destabilizing by 2050 as energy issues are today."¶ Davies, who also is a Texas A&M AgriLife Regents
Professor of Horticultural Sciences, addressed the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting in Washington, D.C. on the
"monumental challenge of feeding the world."¶ He said the world population will increase 30 percent to 9 billion
people by mid-century.
That would call for a 70 percent increase in food to meet demand.¶ "But resource
limitations will constrain global food systems," Davies added. "The increases currently projected for
crop production from biotechnology, genetics, agronomics and horticulture will not be sufficient
to meet food demand." Davies said the ability to discover ways to keep pace with food demand have
been curtailed by cutbacks in spending on research.¶ "The U.S. agricultural productivity has averaged less than 1.2
percent per year between 1990 and 2007," he said. "More efficient technologies and crops will need to be developed -- and equally
important, better ways for applying these technologies locally for farmers -- to address this challenge." Davies said when new
technologies are developed, they often do not reach the small-scale farmer worldwide.
Warming Advantage
EXT—OTEC Solves Warming
OTEC is the only way to solve climate change—zero emissions and sequestration
Bechtel and Netz 1998(No date Given, last date cited, Maria and Erik, "OTEC - Ocean Thermal
Energy Conversion", http://www.exergy.se/ftp/cng97ot.pdf)
One of the most critical problems of the next century will certainly be global warming. OTEC is
unique among all energy generation the technologies in that not only does it generate no
carbon dioxide whatsoever, but it actually counteracts the effects of fossil fuel use. OTEC
involves bringing up mineral-rich water from the depths of the oceans. This water will promote
growth of photosynthetic phytoplankton. These organisms will absorb carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere into their bodies, and when they die, or when the animals, which eat them, die, the
carbon dioxide will be sequestered in the depths of the oceans. The effect is not small. Each 100megawatt OTEC plant will cause the absorption of an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent
to that produce by fossil fuel power plant of roughly the same capacity. No other energy
technology ever imagined can do this. OTEC plants construction, with laying pipes in coastal
waters may cause localised damage to reefs and near-shore marine ecosystems.
OTEC can solve carbon emissions—provides enough electricity for the globe
Burns 2011(Stuart, Metal Miner Staff Writer, April 25, "OTEC’s Zero-Carbon Emissions Too
Good to Be True? Maybe not.", http://agmetalminer.com/2011/04/25/unlimited-power-and-zerocarbon-emissions-too-good-to-be-true-maybe-not/)
Major hurdles still need to be overcome, one of which is the cost and design of the deep water
pipe used to bring cold water to the surface. One suggestion is to pump the refrigerant down to
the depths and then bring it back up chilled. But that would lose the benefit of using nutrient-rich
deep water for aquaculture; however, for plants sited further out to sea that opportunity is greatly
diminished anyway. It may be that it takes Lockheed Martin’s largely government-funded
research project to prove the technology, yet for the last 40 years Sea Solar’s founders have been
researching and developing the technology largely off their own backs. (How often has the
original inventor not been the one to capitalize on the development of a new technology?)
Nevertheless as Lockheed’s video introduces, the world’s oceans absorb the equivalent of 250
billion barrels of oil-equivalent solar energy every day; if less than 0.1 percent of this could
be harnessed via OTEC, it would be the equivalent of 20 times the electricity consumed in
the US with virtually zero carbon emitted, no unsightly windmills in your backyard or desert
tortoises inconvenienced. A prize worth spending some federal dollars on if ever there was one!
EXT—Warming Real/Anthropogenic
Warming is real and human cause – an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence
Rahmstorf 2008 (Stefan, Professor at the Postdam Institute for Climate Research,
"Anthropogenic Climate Change: Revisiting the Facts," http://www.pik
potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Book_chapters/Rahmstorf_Zedillo_2008.pdf)
This paper discussed the evidence for the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration and the effect of CO2 on climate,
finding that this anthro- pogenic increase is proven beyond reasonable doubt and that a mass of
evidence points to a CO2 effect on climate of 3°C ± 1.5°C global warming for a doubling of
concentration. (This is the classic IPCC range; my personal assessment is that, in the light of new studies since the IPCC Third
Assessment Report, the uncertainty range can now be narrowed somewhat to 3°C ± 1°C.)
This is based on consistent
results from theory, models, and data analysis, and, even in the absence of any
computer models, the same result would still hold based on physics and on data
from climate history alone. Considering the plethora of consistent evidence, the
chance that these conclusions are wrong has to be con- sidered minute . If the preceding is
accepted, then it follows logically and incontrovertibly that a further increase in CO2 concentration will lead to further warming. The
magnitude of our emissions depends on human behavior, but the climatic response to various emissions scenarios can be computed
from the information presented here. The result is the famous range of future global temperature sce- narios shown in figure 3-6.50
Two additional steps are involved in these computations: the consideration of anthropogenic forcings other than CO2 (for example,
other greenhouse gases and aerosols) and the computation of concentrations from the emissions. Other gases are not discussed here,
although they are important to get quantitatively accurate results.
CO2 is the largest and most important
forcing . Concerning concentrations, the scenarios shown basically assume that ocean and biosphere take up a similar share of
our emitted CO2 as in the past. This could turn out to be an optimistic assumption; some models
indicate the possibility of
a posi- tive feedback, with the biosphere turning into a carbon source rather than a sink under
growing climatic stress.51 It is clear that even in the more optimistic of the shown (non-mitigation) scenarios, global
temperature would rise by 2–3°C above its preindustrial level by the end of this century. Even for a paleo- climatologist like myself,
this is an extraordinarily high temperature, which is very likely unprecedented in at least the past
100,000 years. As far as the data show, we would have to go back about 3 million years, to the
Pliocene, for comparable temperatures. The rate of this warming (which is important for the ability of ecosystems to
cope) is also highly unusual and unprecedented proba- bly for an even longer time. The last major
global warming trend occurred when the last great Ice Age ended between 15,000 and 10,000
years ago: this was a warming of about 5°C over 5,000 years, that is, a rate of only 0.1°C per
century.52 The expected magnitude and rate of planetary warming is highly likely to come with major risks and impacts in terms
of sea level rise (Pliocene sea level was 25–35 meters higher than now due to smaller Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets), extreme
events (for example, hurricane activity is expected to increase in a warmer climate), and ecosystem loss.53 The second part of this
paper examined the evidence for the current warming of the planet and discussed what is known about its causes. This part showed
that
global warming is already a measured and well-established fact, not a theory.
Many different lines of evidence consistently show that most of the observed
warming of the past fifty years was caused by human activity . Above all , this warming
is exactly what would be expected given the anthropogenic rise in greenhouse gases,
and no viable alternative explanation for this warming has been proposed in the
scientific literature.
independent studies,
has
Taken together,
over the past decades
the very strong evidence , accumulated from thousands of
convinced virtually every clima- tologist around the
world
(many of whom were initially quite skeptical, includ- ing myself)
warming is a reality with which we need to deal.
that anthropogenic global
EXT—Causes Extinction
Global warming leads to extinction
Stein 2008(David, Science editor for The Guardian, July 14, “Global Warming Xtra: Scientists
warn about Antarctic melting,”
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/07/14/02463.html)
Global Warming continues to be approaches by governments as a "luxury" item, rather than a matter of basic
human survival. Humanity is being taken to its destruction by a greed-driven elite. These elites, which
include 'Big Oil' and other related interests, are intoxicated by "the high" of pursuing ego-driven power, in a comparable manner to
drug addicts who pursue an elusive "high", irrespective of the threat of pursuing that "high" poses to their own
basic survival, and the security of others. Global Warming and the pre-emptive war against Iraq are part of
the same self-destructive prism of a political-military-industrial complex, which is on a path of
mass planetary destruction, backed by techniques of mass-deception."The scientific debate about
human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping general public - still seem to not understand
the scope of the impending tragedy. Global
warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat waves,
melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to
runaway global warming leading to human extinction", reported Bill Henderson in CrossCurrents. If
strict global environmental security measures are not immediately put in place to keep
further emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of
billions, the end of civilization as we know it and in all probability the end of humankind's
several million year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora and fauna beloved
to man in the world we share.
EXT—Acidification
Warming causes extinction
Sify 2010 – Sydney newspaper citing Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at University of
Queensland and Director of the Global Change Institute, and John Bruno, associate professor of
Marine Science at UNC; Sify News, “Could unbridled climate changes lead to human
extinction?”, http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridled-climate-changes-lead-to-humanextinction-news-international-kgtrOhdaahc.html
The findings of the comprehensive report: 'The impact of climate change on the world's marine ecosystems' emerged from a synthesis
of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists. One of the authors of the report is
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at The University of Queensland and the director of its Global Change Institute (GCI).
'We may
see sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of
humans, including the capacity of the planet to support people. This is further evidence that
we are well on the way to the next great extinction event,' says Hoegh-Guldberg. 'The findings have
enormous implications for mankind, particularly if the trend continues. The earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we
breathe and absorbs 30 per cent of human-generated carbon dioxide, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. This study shows worrying
signs of ill-health. It's as if the earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!,' he added. 'We are entering a period in which the
ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some
cases beginning to fail', he added. The 'fundamental and comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the
report include rapidly warming and acidifying oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion
of dead zones within the ocean depths. These are driving major changes in marine
ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer, smaller fish; a
breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of marine life; and more frequent
diseases and pests among marine organisms. Study co-author John F Bruno, associate
professor in marine science at The University of North Carolina, says greenhouse gas
emissions are modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's oceans, in
ways 'unprecedented in nearly a million years'. 'This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes
to the way marine ecosystems function,' Bruno warned, according to a GCI release. These findings were published in Science.
A2: OTEC Causes CO2 Release
Total release of CO2 is 1% of fossil fuels
Dubois Klein and Villemure 2008(Shawn, Kerry, and Marlene, Department of Earth and
Planetary Sciences at the University of Montreal, March 1, "Viability of renewable technologies
from marine", EBSCO)
OTEC plants incur minor environmental impacts compared to traditional power plants (Pelc &
Fujita, 2002). The only significant CO2 emission would occur during construction (Matsuno,
1998) and operation phase. Approximately four years are required to offset the CO2 emissions
associated with their construction compared to non-renewable plants (Vega, 2003). The CO2
released during operation, related to the outgassing of sequestered carbon into the
atmosphere (Pelc & Fujita, 2002), represents less than one percent of the amount released by a
fuel oil plant (700 grams/kWh, from Vega, 2003).
CO2 discharge from OTEC is minimal and overall outputs would decrease via lower
fossil fuel use.
Avery 1994 (William,. B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees
in physical chemistry from Harvard. “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” p.
436-437)
Solubility in seawater decreases with increasing temperature. Also deep ocean water is enriched with inorganic carbon with respect to
the surface waters. Operation of the OTEC condensers requires that large volumes of cold CO2 rich water be brought to the surface.
The decreased pressure and increased temperature will decrease the ability of the
discharged water to retain CO2 in solution. A net out-gassing of CO2 might occur. At an OTEC facility, the CO2
concentration in the cold-water effluent after discharge would approach equilibrium with CO2 in the ambient water at the point of
discharge, as a worst case in the mixed layer. The
maximum CO2 that could evolve due to OTEC
operation is the difference between the CO2 concentration in deep and surface waters. The
CO2 concentrations in surface water and at 700-m depth are approximately 2.0 and 2.4 moles CO2/kg water, respectively. If a
100-MWe OTEC plant pumps 227 mgs (19.5 x 109 kg/d) of deep water to the surface,
approximately 0.25 xl 06 kg of CO2 would be released each day if all excess CO2 were out-gassed
(Quinby-Hunt et al., 1987). Sullivan et al. (1981) estimated 0.475 x 106 kg/d. These estimates assume that all excess CO2 would be
released. The Hawaii test program indicates that
only a small fraction of the dissolved CO2 is
released . For comparison, the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere by a fossil fuel-fired
power plant of the same electric power capacity is three to four times as much (Ditmars and
Paddock, 1979). Release of CO2 due to the operation of a small number of OTEC plants is not
likely to cause significant effect on local or regional climate. If OTEC plants were deployed to supply
approximately l0x 106 MWe, at most 3 x 1010 kg/d of CO2 would be released to the air. Release of CO2 to the atmosphere by fossilfuel plants of the same power would be approximately 10 x 1010 kg/d.
A2: CO2 Not Key
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the overwhelming cause of climate change
Ross et all 2012(Andrew, Damon Matthews, and Zavareh Kothavala, Department of Geography,
Planning and Environment, Concordia University, and Andreas Schmittner, College of OCeanic
and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, January 13, "Assessing the effects of
ocean diffusivity and climate sensitivity on the rate of global climate change",
http://mgg.coas.oregonstate.edu/~andreas/pdf/R/ross12tel.pdf)jn
Anthropogenic interference in the climate system is leading to an increasing rate of climate
warming in response to continued emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Between 1979 and
2005, global temperatures increased at a rate of approximately 0.17 8C/decade (Trenberth et al., 2007) driven by a
rate of increase of radiative forcing that is unprecedented in at least the past 22 000 yrs (Joos and Spahini, 2008). This
high rate of climate warming is expected to continue in response to unrestricted greenhouse gas
emissions, leading to increasing concern that we are much closer to dangerous levels of climate change than previously anticipated
(Hansen et al., 2008). The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change states that greenhouse gas levels in the
atmosphere should be stabilised ‘at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system . . . within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate
change’ (UNFCCC, 1992). This statement emphasises not only the magnitude of change but also the rate at which changes occur, as
determinants of the potential for dangerous climate impacts. There are climate impacts, which are sensitive not only to the absolute
magnitude of warming but also to the speed at which the change occurs (Stocker & Schmittner, 1997; Leemans and Eickhout, 2004;
O’Neill and Oppenheimer, 2004). Large rates of change have the potential to stress the adaptive capacity of ecosystems (Solomon et
al., 2010).
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the key driver in climate change
Delucia et al 2008 (Evan H., PhD, plant ecology and physiology, Duke University and professor
and head of the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
Clare L. Casteel, Paul D. Nabity, and Bridget F. O'Neill, “Insects take a bigger bite out of plants
in a warmer, higher carbon dioxide world” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
105:6 02/12/08 pp. 1781-1782)
Carbon dioxide is a potent “greenhouse” gas. The dramatic increase in its concentration in the
atmosphere as a result of human activities, beginning with accelerated fossil fuels combustion in
the late 18th century, and perhaps even earlier, with modern agricultural expansion 8,000 years ago (1, 2), is driving a striking rise in
global temperature (3). For the past 650,000 years, until relatively recently, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was
280 ppm or less; however, the current concentration exceeds
380 ppm and, on its present trajectory, will surpass
550 ppm by 2050 (3). The accumulation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is
forcing an elevation of global mean temperature; during the lifetime of child born today, the average temperature of
the earth will increase by as much as ≈6°C (3). Working in concert, elevated temperature and CO2 are redistributing plant and
animal communities on the surface of the earth (4). Because of the direct effect of CO2 and temperature on global food supplies, the
influence of these changes on plant physiology and ecology is being actively studied (4–7). How these elements of global change may
alter the interactions between plants and the insects that feed on them is relatively unknown. By bringing to light secrets contained in
the fossil record, Currano et al. (8), published in this issue of PNAS, found that the amount and diversity of insect damage to plants
increased in association with an abrupt rise in atmospheric CO2 and global temperature that occurred >55 million years ago. If the past
is indeed a window to the future, their findings suggest that increased insect herbivory will be one more unpleasant surprise arising
from anthropogenic climate change.
Leadership Add-On
2AC—Leadership
Investment in offshore OTEC is critical to US OTEC leadership and international
OTEC development—this prevents Chinese hegemony.
Moore 2006(Bill, citing Dr. Hans Krock, founder of OCEES, April 12, "OTEC Resurfaces",
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1008)
While onshore installations like the one in Hawaii have their place in providing island
communities with power, water, air conditioning and aquaculture, OCEES believes the real
potential is offshore. The limiting factor for onshore is the size and length of the pipe needed to reach deep, cold water. Offshore production requires relatively
short pipes that can be much larger in diameter that drop straight down below the platform. Krock said he is confident that we can now built 100 megawatt plants and he can
foresee the day when 500 megawatt and 1000 megawatt (1 gigawatt) plants will be possible. Because the resource is far out into the ocean, far away from any national political
entity, it isn't under the jurisdiction of any particular nation. "So countries such as Switzerland or others could go out there and be completely self-sufficient in energy by having
their own energy supply in the tropical zone on the high seas far outside anybody‘s two hundred mile economic zone." Global Warming's Benefit Krock explained that the solar
energy stored in the world's oceans is what drives the planet's weather and that a single category five hurricane generates more energy in a day than all mankind uses in a year. This
may be the only benefit of global warming, providing even more warm water from which to produce power. "The ocean has increased in temperature by about point six degrees.
That extra amount of heat that is in the ocean that has been stored in there over, say, the last forty years; that amount of heat, that amount of energy is enough to run all of
humankind's energy requirements for the next five hundred years... just the extra." I asked Dr. Krock about two potential drawbacks to OTEC: environmental disruption and
susceptibility to storm damage. He explained that his team has carefully looked at the first issue, environmental disruption, and determined that there would be none despite
bringing up hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day to run the facility, because the water could be shunted back down to a level in the ocean where it would be neutrally
buoyant. As to the question of tropical storms like typhoons or hurricanes and the risk they might pose for offshore OTEC platforms, he explained that these storms form outside of
a tropical zone which extends approximately 4-5 degrees above and below the equator. Platforms operating within this narrower belt won't have to worry about these powerful
storms and the damage they might cause, though he does plan to engineer for such contingencies. Unlike the illustration above that uses propellers to drive the plant, Krock's
moving the "grazing" OTEC mini-islands would rely on two intriguing systems:
thrust vectoring and ocean current "sails". An OTEC plant generates a great deal of thrust from the uptake and expulsion of seawater,
concept for
which can be directed to gradually move the platform in a desired direction. The 1000-feet stand pipe below the plant is like an inverted mast on a sailing ship. Sensors can detect
the direction of the current at various depths, allowing the deployment of underwater "sails" that could also be used to passively steer the plant. "There is nothing better than
working with nature," Krock commented. "This is simply a model on a human scale of the world's hydrological cycle." When compared to other renewable energy sources such as
wind and biomass, he calls the heat energy stored in the ocean as the "elephant in the room". Krock envisions a plant made of floating concrete that is five square acres in size and
could include fish processing facilities, ocean mineral mining and refining and the aforementioned rocket launch pad. An earlier Lockheed design was circular, measured some 100
meters in diameter and would generate 500 megawatts of electric power. "This is a transformation of endeavors from land to the ocean. The world is 70 percent oceans, 30 percent
[land]... which we have used up to a large extent. The only major resource we have left is the ocean. This is a mechanism to utilize the ocean." "We do not have the luxury of
waiting far into the future because I am sure you have read peak oil is coming... Unless we do this now, a transformation of this magnitude takes time. We have to allocate at least
50 years to do this, but that means we have to start now, because in fifty years we won't have the luxury of having another energy source to let us do the construction for these
. "The United States is the best placed of any country in the world to do this," he
contends. "The United States is the only country in the world of any size whose budget for
its navy is bigger than the budget for its army." It's his contention that this will enable
America to assume a leadership position in OTEC technology, allowing it to deploy plants
in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Pacific, but he offers a warming. "If we are stupid enough
not to take advantage of this, well then this will be China's century and not the
things
American century ." Krock is currently negotiating with the U.S. Navy to deploy first
working OTEC plant offshore of a British-controlled island in the Indian Ocean -- most
likely Diego Garcia though he wouldn't confirm this for security purposes.
U.S. leadership prevents multiple scenarios for escalation
Zhang and Shi 2011(Yuhan, researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and
Lin, Columbia University, consultant for the Eurasia Group and World Bank, January 22,
"America's Decline: A Harbinger of Conflict and Rivalry",
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-a-harbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/)
Over the past two decades, no
other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military.
actors have bandwagoned with US
hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia,
Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great
power conflicts. However, as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the
pulling power behind the US alliance. The result will be an international order where power
is more diffuse, American interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and
conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid. As history attests, power decline and
redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a
Under these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many
regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the
increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain ‘rules the
waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemisphere’s security to become
the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are
three key characteristics: enforcement of property rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some
degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society. As
a result of such political stability, free markets,
liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared. And, with this, many
countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and
cooperative relations. However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence
declines? Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America, Central
and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question could affect global
society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public
imagination and academia have anticipated that a posthegemonic world would return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts
and strategic rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to
regional organisations. For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum
left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their own visions of regional political
and economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and, well, less free —
and major powers would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically
possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the
Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did
international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973). A
world without American hegemony is one
where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by an
authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation
barriers. This, at least, is one possibility we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.
EXT—Key to Leadership
OTEC key to overall US technological leadership.
Udayakumar and Anadakrishnan 1997 (R. Ramesh, K Udayakumar, and M Anandakrishnan,
1997. Centre for Water Resources and Ocean Management Anna University, India., School of
Electrical and Electronics Centre for Water Resources and Ocean Management Anna University,
India, and Former Vice Chancellor, Anna University, Tamil Nadu State Council for higher
Education. “Renewable Energy Technologies,” pg. 33.)
6.2 Non-economic Benefits
The non-economic benefits of OTEC which facilitate achievement of goals are: promotion of the
country’s competitiveness and international trade, enhancement of energy independence and
security, promotion of international political stability, and a potential for control of greenhouse
emissions. Maintenance of leadership in 10 the technology development is crucial to the capability
of a significant share of the market in the global market for such systems exploitable energy
resource available to a large number of countries, particularly developing countries, represents long-term
export opportunities. Development of OTEC technology would mitigate dependence on external sources of energy for remote
and. A viable OTEC commercial sector also support national defense by enhancing related
maritime industry and by providing energy and water options for remote island defence
installations.
EXT—U.S. Leadership Prevents Escalation
Global nuclear conflicts in every region of the world
Kagan 2007 (Robert, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “End of
Dreams, Return of History”, 7/19,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/end_of_dreams_return_of_histor.html)
This is a good thing, and it should continue to be a primary goal of American foreign policy to perpetuate this relatively benign international configuration of power. The unipolar
order with the United States as the predominant power is unavoidably riddled with flaws and contradictions. It inspires fears and jealousies. The United States is not immune to
error, like all other nations, and because of its size and importance in the international system those errors are magnified and take on greater significance than the errors of less
powerful nations. Compared to the ideal Kantian international order, in which all the world's powers would be peace-loving equals, conducting themselves wisely, prudently, and
the unipolar system is both dangerous and unjust. Compared to any
plausible alternative in the real world, however, it is relatively stable and less likely to
produce a major war between great powers. It is also comparatively benevolent, from a liberal perspective, for it
is more conducive to the principles of economic and political liberalism that Americans and many others value. American
predominance does not stand in the way of progress toward a better world, therefore. It stands in the way of
regression toward a more dangerous world. The choice is not between an Americandominated order and a world that looks like the European Union. The future international
order will be shaped by those who have the power to shape it. The leaders of a post-American world will not meet in
in strict obeisance to international law,
Brussels but in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington. The return of great powers and great games If the world is marked by the persistence of unipolarity, it is nevertheless also being
shaped by the reemergence of competitive national ambitions of the kind that have shaped human affairs from time immemorial. During the Cold War, this historical tendency of
great powers to jostle with one another for status and influence as well as for wealth and power was largely suppressed by the two superpowers and their rigid bipolar order. Since
the end of the Cold War, the United States has not been powerful enough, and probably could never be powerful enough, to suppress by itself the normal ambitions of nations. This
does not mean the world has returned to multipolarity, since none of the large powers is in range of competing with the superpower for global influence. Nevertheless, several large
powers are now competing for regional predominance, both with the United States and with each other. National ambition drives China's foreign policy today, and although it is
the Chinese are powerfully motivated to
return their nation to what they regard as its traditional position as the preeminent power
in East Asia. They do not share a European, postmodern view that power is passé; hence their now two-decades-long military
tempered by prudence and the desire to appear as unthreatening as possible to the rest of the world,
buildup and modernization. Like the Americans, they believe power, including military power, is a good thing to have and that it is
better to have more of it than less. Perhaps more significant is the Chinese perception, also shared by Americans, that status and honor,
and not just wealth and security, are important for a nation. Japan, meanwhile, which in the past could have been counted as an
aspiring postmodern power -- with its pacifist constitution and low defense spending -- now
appears embarked on a
more traditional national course. Partly this is in reaction to the rising power of China and
concerns about North Korea 's nuclear weapons. But it is also driven by Japan's own national ambition to be a leader in East Asia or
at least not to play second fiddle or "little brother" to China. China and Japan are now in a competitive quest with each trying to augment its own status and power and to prevent
the other 's rise to predominance, and this competition has a military and strategic as well as an economic and political component. Their competition is such that a nation like
South Korea, with a long unhappy history as a pawn between the two powers, is once again worrying both about a "greater China" and about the return of Japanese nationalism. As
Russian foreign policy,
being driven by a typical, and typically
Russian, blend of national resentment and ambition. A postmodern Russia simply seeking integration into the new European
Aaron Friedberg commented, the East Asian future looks more like Europe's past than its present. But it also looks like Asia's past.
too, looks more like something from the nineteenth century. It is
order, the Russia of Andrei Kozyrev, would not be troubled by the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO, would not insist on predominant influence over its "near abroad,"
and would not use its natural resources as means of gaining geopolitical leverage and enhancing Russia 's international status in an attempt to regain the lost glories of the Soviet
empire and Peter the Great. But Russia, like China and Japan, is moved by more traditional great-power considerations, including the pursuit of those valuable if intangible
national interests: honor and respect. Although Russian leaders complain about threats to their security from NATO and the United States, the Russian sense of insecurity has more
to do with resentment and national identity than with plausible external military threats. 16 Russia's complaint today is not with this or that weapons system. It is the entire postCold War settlement of the 1990s that Russia resents and wants to revise. But that does not make insecurity less a factor in Russia 's relations with the world; indeed, it makes
India 's
regional ambitions are more muted, or are focused most intently on Pakistan, but it is
clearly engaged in competition with China for dominance in the Indian Ocean and sees itself, correctly,
finding compromise with the Russians all the more difficult. One could add others to this list of great powers with traditional rather than postmodern aspirations.
as an emerging great power on the world scene. In the Middle East there is Iran, which mingles religious fervor with a historical sense of superiority and leadership in its region. 17
Its nuclear program is as much about the desire for regional hegemony as about defending Iranian territory from attack by the United States. Even the European Union, in its way,
expresses a pan-European national ambition to play a significant role in the world, and it has become the vehicle for channeling German, French, and British ambitions in what
Europeans regard as a safe supranational direction. Europeans seek honor and respect, too, but of a postmodern variety. The honor they seek is to occupy the moral high ground in
the world, to exercise moral authority, to wield political and economic influence as an antidote to militarism, to be the keeper of the global conscience, and to be recognized and
admired by others for playing this role. Islam is not a nation, but many Muslims express a kind of religious nationalism, and the leaders of radical Islam, including al Qaeda, do
seek to establish a theocratic nation or confederation of nations that would encompass a wide swath of the Middle East and beyond. Like national movements elsewhere, Islamists
have a yearning for respect, including self-respect, and a desire for honor. Their national identity has been molded in defiance against stronger and often oppressive outside powers,
and also by memories of ancient superiority over those same powers. China had its "century of humiliation." Islamists have more than a century of humiliation to look back on, a
humiliation of which Israel has become the living symbol, which is partly why even Muslims who are neither radical nor fundamentalist proffer their sympathy and even their
support to violent extremists who can turn the tables on the dominant liberal West, and particularly on a dominant America which implanted and still feeds the Israeli cancer in
the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations,
Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the
Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal after the Second
World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and continuing through the Clinton years,
the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the
their midst. Finally, there is
Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged
in hegemonic
competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle
East and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.
The United States, too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they
generally prefer their global place as "No. 1" and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical
or idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it in their
own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to shape the
behavior of billions of people around the globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be
nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system. Nationalism
in all its forms is
back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for power, influence, honor, and
status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying -- its regional as
well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions
where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great
and lesser powers have done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often
through confrontation and wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a
multipolar world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could
make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but also dangerous
to underestimate the role the United States plays in providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For
instance, the United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home
waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways and trade
routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United States engages in a war, it is able to
play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for
naval dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict
between nations would involve
struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in World War
i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now impossible. Such
order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided by American power. Even the
European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to American power, for without it the European nations after World
War ii would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europe
's stability depends on the guarantee, however distant and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States
could step in to check any dangerous development on the continent. In a genuinely
multipolar world, that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world war.
People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to a
basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a
world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But that 's not
the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power. The international
order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War.
A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe,
would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a
hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful
that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from
perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the world's great powers. Even
under the umbrella of
unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt
between China and Taiwan and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and
Georgia, forcing the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian
victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or
other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers, including the United
States. Such conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United States pursues. But they are more likely to
erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is
especially true in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a
stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of China 's neighbors. But even
China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the region, faces the dilemma that an American
withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist Japan. In
Europe, too, the departure of the United
States from the scene -- even if it remained the world's most powerful nation -- could be destabilizing. It could tempt
Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly nations on
its periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the
possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history
suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet communism. If
the United States withdrew
from Europe -- if it adopted what some call a strategy of "offshore
balancing" -- this could in time increase
the likelihood of conflict involving Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw
the United States back in under unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a
retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more
passive, "offshore" role would lead to greater stability there. The vital interest the United States has in
access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders
could or would stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more "even-handed" policy
toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come
to Israel 's aid if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American commitment to protect strategic oil
supplies for most of the world, practically ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the
ground. The subtraction of American power from any region would not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In
the
Middle East, competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has
raged for at least two centuries. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesn't change this. It
only adds a new and more threatening dimension to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would change. The alternative
to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is further competition. The
region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution of American influence would not be
followed by a diminution of other external influences. One could expect deeper involvement
by both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the more powerful states of the
region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American administration would voluntarily take actions
that could shift the balance of power in the Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasn 't changed that much.
An American withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to "normal" or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new
instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again. The alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East
and elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified
competition among nations and nationalist movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no
one should imagine that a reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide an
easier path.
A2: OTEC Bad
2AC—Environment DA
No risk of environmental damage from OTEC
Jean 2010(Grace, Writer for National Defense, April 1, "Renewable Energy: Navy Taps Oceans
for Power", EBSCO)
The environmental impact on the oceans will be minimal, officials say. Water will be
discharged back into the seas at depths that correspond to its temperature. Screens on the
warm water intake pipes will prevent large fish from being caught up in the current. The
pipes’ low velocity intake will allow smaller marine animals to swim out. The cold water
pipes may not have to contend with wildlife or bio-fouling issues. But because the water’s
nutrient content is higher than that of warmer water, it must be recycled carefully to not cause
algae blooming in surface waters. The team plans to discharge the water in a plume that
reaches the ocean’s mesopelagic zone, where it will settle down to its proper depth.
OTEC solves ocean ecosystem collapse
Binger 2004 (Al, Visiting Professor at Saga University Institute of Ocean Energy, Director of the
University of West Indies Centre for Environment and Development, “Potential and Future
Prospects for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) In Small Islands Developing States
(SIDS),” United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)
The BPOA pointed out that the sustainable development of SIDS, in the vast majority of cases, would be linked to extracting services
and products from the environment. If SIDS
were able to do so in a sustainable manner, i.e., without
destroying or degrading the natural environment, their development would be sustainable .
As pointed out earlier, the significant
degradation of the natural environment in all SIDS , because of
their relatively small size and isolation,
represents a serious threat to
future
survival
of the present and future
population. To a large extent, the
ongoing environmental degradation is the combination of bad
practices driven by the limited availability of options to find means of livelihood for a
growing population. The situation is compounded further by the limited training and
understanding of how to manage the natural environment and their limited resources. If
the trend continues in the long-term, the impact will be irreversible damage. A
particular case is coral reefs, which are the most critical ecosystem
for SIDS. They are the
basis of the tourism industry, which is the largest means of livelihood for the SIDS population, a principal source of food (protein),
which is a major export for many SIDS, and the natural defence mechanism protecting the coastline, where the bulk of SIDS
infrastructure and human settlements is usually located, and also protection from the raging tidal force driven by tropical
cyclones/hurricanes. Degradation
or destruction of coral reef ecosystems would therefore have
dire consequence for many SIDS. An excellent example is presented by the Maldives. The Maldives’ economy is based
primarily on fishing and tourism; consequently, it depends on the extensive coral reef ecosystem. During 1999 to 2001, there was
a two degree Celsius increase in the average temperature in the Indian Ocean. As a result, there
was a significant ongoing reduction in the marine catch, as shown in Figure.6. This reduction in
catch is due to the physiology of the coral reef ecosystem in which a number of symbiotic
relationships exist between different biological organisms . An increase in temperature
by a few degrees changes the relationships and the coral’s ability to convert
sunlight into biomass, which provided the energy for the entire ecosystem including
fish. This phenomenon is described as coral bleaching and this ends only when the
seawater temperature returns to normal range.
Recovery, also shown in Figure 6, takes much longer.
OTEC takes heat from the surface as well as bring the cold water to the surface, so
this could be utilized to help control bleaching of critical coral reef systems,
potentially giving SIDS an option that is now not available.
OTEC increases the nutrient value of water, stabilizing ecosystems
Goodbody and Thomas-Hope 2002(Ivan, Professor of Zoology at the University of West Indies,
and Elizabeth, Professor of Environmental Management at the University of West Indies,
"Natural Resource Management For Sustainable Development In The Caribbean", p334)
One of the important components of an OTEC system is a continuous supply of cold sea
water pumped up from ocean depths. These ocean waters not only have low temperatures but
they are also rich in nutrients. Compared to warm surface water, inorganic nitrate-nitrite values
in deep cold water are 190 times higher, phosphate values 15 times higher, and silicate values 25
times higher. Aquaculturists have long viewed such waters as a valuable resource that can be
utilized for growing a mix of aquatic animals and plants. This ability of the OTEC system to
provide flexible, accurate, and consistent temperature control, high volume flow rates, and sea
water that is relatively free of biological and chemical contaminants, can be translated into a
saleable aquaculture product.
OTEC won’t hurt the environment 7– leaks are insignificant and the nutrient-rich
water offsets harm to marine life
Dworsky 2006 (Rick, Member of environmental conservation and energy issues board for over
30 years in government and private industry. “A Warm Bath of Energy -- Ocean Thermal Energy
Conversion,” The Oildrum, June 5 http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/5/171056/6460)
At this time OTEC appears to offer an environmentally neutral energy source. The intermittent
injection of minimal amounts of chlorine to prevent bio-fouling of the warm water intakes, and the leaching of metal particles and
other materials via erosion/corrosion would probably be environmentally insignificant. Large storage tanks for chlorine would not be
necessary - small amounts could be generated 'live' as required to manage the danger to personnel. No bio-fouling within the cold
water intake tube has occurred. Although a 100% kill rate for small organisms such as phytoplankton that get drawn into the warm
water intakes is probably inevitable,
it is believed that this can be mitigated by the pumped 'upwelling'
of cold deep fertile waters and the outfall effluent. Only extensive monitoring of an installed
mid-size test facility can enable a comprehensive environmental assessment, and find the
balance point between bloom and bust. Adjustments of the outfall depth may be necessary,
according to local conditions. It may well be the case that OTEC can target some of the energy that causes damaging and
catastrophic storms and redirect it into useful work, if large mobile floating platforms become a reality. We should carefully
consider when a location can host the process and remain within it's normal temperature
gradient range, this would be similar to concerns about the energy absorption effects of solar panels and windmills. OTEC
appears to be a vast, renewable, sustainable, safe, 'always on' energy source that does not emit CO2 or nuclear waste.
OTEC will not harm ocean environments—multiple studies prove.
Avery 1994 (William, B.S. in chemistry from Pomona College and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in
physical chemistry from Harvard, “Renewable energy from the ocean: a guide to OTEC,” p. 418419.)
Some concerns about OTEC have been expressed regarding biological impacts, such as impingement/entrainment, use of biocides,
metallic discharges, etc. Marine biota, particularly those with low mobility, may be harmed by impingement or entrainment in the
pumping system by contact with the screens and walls of the pipe and heat exchanger system.
Marine life mortality
caused by impingement has been studied in relation to coastal nuclear power plants, and the effects during
OTEC operation may be similar. For marine biota, impingement is expected to be confined predominantly to small fish, jellyfish, and
pelagic invertebrates. For near-shore OTEC plants, crustaceans are likely to be impinged in the greatest numbers. The
potential
for ecologically or commercially significant losses is small.
Marine organisms small enough to pass through the
screens and be entrained in the seawater flowing through the heat exchangers will be subjected to tempera-ture and pressure changes
in short time spans. In addition, marine life entrained in the deep ocean water pumped up to the surface is subjected to major changes
in dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and light levels. Because
of the very low level of marine life in the deep
oceans, the effects should be negligible.
Chlorine has been tested as a biocide to prevent biofouling of the evaporator
surfaces on the seawater side. Experiments in Hawaii have shown that addition of chlorine at a concentration of 0.050 ppm 1 hid (0.02
ppm daily average) prevents biofouling. The U.S. EPA's standard for marine water quality allows an average chlorine concentration of
0.01 mg/liter (0.10 ppm). Thus
it appears that the impact of OTEC biofouling control on the marine
ecosystem will be minimal. Protective hull coating materials released from ships stationed in harbors have been found to
be toxic to resident organisms. The toxic substances released from the coatings can accumulate in the tissues of biofouling organisms,
and be passed up the food chain. There
is no evidence that such coatings would be necessary for
commercial OTEC installations.