2014 NDI 6WS – Fitzmier, Lundberg,
Abelkop
Deep Ocean Exploration Neg
ON CASE
Algae Advantage
1NC Biofuels Advantage
Throwing money at algae biofuels fails—won’t be viable for decades
Russek, 2010 (Gabriela Russek, India Carbon Outlook writer, “ Algae Biofuels: Possibilities, Uncertainties”, India Carbon Outlook,
01/19/2010, http://india.carbon-outlook.com/content/algae-biofuels-exciting-possibilities-uncertain-future)
These benefits are so significant that governments, investors, and scientists still support investing in R&D, even though research thus far
been fraught with disappointments .
Decades of scientific study have gone into algae biofuels, including
Japanese and US government projects, and privately funded research . The United States
Government funded research into the fuel from 1978-1996, in the DOE Aquatic Species Project, but ended
the project to focus limited budgets on bioethanol.[13] Despite over 30 years of research, there is still
no commercially viable large-scale production of algae biofuel .[14] As fossil fuel prices rise, investment in the
technology has been renewed. The U.S. Government is resuming funding.[15] Major investors are partnering with algae tech companies,
including an investment of $600 million by Exxon Mobil into Synthetic Genomics, and a similar partnership between Bill Gates’ Cascade
Investments and Sapphire Energy’s algae research.[16] The many new of enthusiastic start-up algae fuel companies (one article mentioned
more than 60) are making wildly optimistic predictions about the volumes of algae biofuel that could be produced at competitive prices in
the near future. However,
the technology is very far from commercially viable, and several of these
companies have shut down in the face of financial realities.[17] Experts are cautiously optimistic,
but few are willing to predict how soon the technology could be commercially viable. They are also
unsure exactly how efficient it will be in terms of land required, production costs, and carbon abatement. "(t)his research is driven by the
conviction that economies of scale, improvement in yields and output are achievable,” explains Raffaello Garofalo, executive director of
the European Algae Biomass Association (EABA), but adds, “"It would not be responsible to give you dates."[18]
It is not a solution
for the near-term future ; a presenter at the Algae Biofuel summit, Bill Barclay, said the low-estimate claims of 2-4
years are unrealistic[19], and decades-long algae fuel researcher John Benemann is betting on 10-15.[20]
Too many obstacles that plan’s research can’t overcome
LTM, 2008 (Low-Tech Magazine, “Leave the algae alone”, Low-Tech Magazine, 04/08/2008,
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/04/algae-fuel-biof.html)
All this sounds very good, but algae also need a few things, most notably: a
lot of sunshine and massive amounts of
water. To grow algae, you also need phosphorus (besides other minerals), an element that is very much needed by agriculture. Most
algae are grown in brackish or salt water. That sounds as if water is no issue, since our planet has not a shortage
of salt water. However, just like solar energy plants, algae plants are best located in very sunny
regions, like deserts. But, in deserts, and in very sunny places in general, there is not much water to
find. That’s not a problem for solar plants, because they don’t need it. But, how are you going to get seawater to your desert algae
plant? Check the websites of all these companies: not a word about it. There are not that many possibilities. You can
transport seawater to the desert, but that's going to cost you an awful lot of energy, probably more
than what can be produced by the algae . You can also take freshwater from more nearby regions
or underground aquifers and turn it into artificial seawater. But, you promised that algal fuel would not compete
with food
production. A third option is to put your algae plant next to the sea. Now, there are places which are both close to
the sea and have lots of sun. But chances are slim that they are as cheap and abandoned like
deserts are. Most likely, they are already filled up with tourists and hotels, to name one possibility. So you
might be forced to look for a less sunny place close to the sea – which inevitably means that your
energy efficiency is going down. Which again raises the question: will the algae deliver more fuel than is needed to make
them?
Algae biofuels hurt the environment—releases more GHG emissions & threatens
water resources
Rampton & Zabarenko, 2012 (Roberta Rampton and Deborah Zabarenko- environmental correspondents for Reuters,
“Algae biofuel not sustainable now-U.S. research council”, Reuters, 10/24/2014,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-biofuels-algae-idUKBRE89N1Q820121024)
It said a main reason to use alternative fuels for transportation is to cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions created by burning
fossil fuel. But estimates
of greenhouse emissions from algal biofuels cover a wide range, with some suggesting
that over their life cycle, the fuels release more climate-warming gas than petroleum,
it said. The
product now made in small quantities by Sapphire uses algae, sunlight and carbon dioxide as feedstocks to make fuel that is not
dependent on food crops or farmland. The company calls it "green crude." Tim Zenk, a Sapphire vice president, said the company has
worked for five years on the sustainability issues examined in the report. "The NRC has acknowledged something that the industry has
known about in its infancy and began to address immediately," he said. He said Sapphire recycles water and uses land that is not suitable
for agriculture at its New Mexico site, where it hopes to make 100 barrels of algal biofuel a day by 2014. The U.S. Navy used algal biofuel
along with fuel made from cooking oil waste as part of its "Green Fleet" military exercises demonstration this summer, drawing fire from
Republican lawmakers for its nearly $27 per gallon cost. The council study also said it
was unclear whether producing that
much biofuel from algae would actually lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The report shows
the strategy is too risky, said Friends of the Earth, an environmental group. " Algae production poses a doubleedged threat to our water resources, already strained by the drought ," Michal Rosenoer, a biofuels
campaigner with the group, said in a statement.
Ocean research center already begun- it would be the result of the plan
Gewin, 2013 (Virginia Gewin, a science journalist covering environmental issues — from food security to acidifying oceans, “Los
Angeles unveils plans for ocean-research centre”, Nature News, 06/21/2013, http://www.nature.com/news/los-angeles-unveils-plans-forocean-research-centre-1.13250)
California has no shortage of high-profile marine research institutes — from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
in La Jolla in the south, to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute farther north, in Moss Landing. But backers of a plan to convert
a 100-year-old dock in the Port of Los Angeles into a US$500-million research centre and business park
called AltaSea say that there is still an untapped niche in ocean science — a facility focused on making Los Angeles and other
coastal cities sustainable by helping them to adapt to climate change, to become more energy efficient and to reduce marine pollution. The 11-hectare facility
will be developed by a public–private collaboration of the Port of Los Angeles, a family foundation and several California universities. The
centre will
house labs with circulating seawater, offices, lecture halls, classrooms and a visitor centre, according to
construction plans unveiled on 17 June by port officials. The collaboration also hopes to build the world's largest seawater wave tank to study wave damage to
coastal infrastructure. "The idea is to create a hybrid institute around the fundamental challenges inherent to coastal cities," says Anthony Michaels, chief
scientist at Pegasus Capital Advisors, an investment firm in El Segundo, California, who championed the AltaSea proposal during his tenure as director of the
Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. AltaSea's first tenant will be the Southern California Marine
Institute (SCMI), a research alliance of 11 major universities in the region — including eight California State University campuses, the University of Southern
California and Occidental College, both in Los Angeles, and the University of California, Los Angeles. " This
will be a green, world-class
research centre in an area where we are seeing the greatest urban-ocean problems, from runoff to
climate change," says biologist Daniel Pondella, the SCMI's director and a professor at Occidental College. AltaSea's location on an industrial urban
waterfront will help the 19-year-old alliance to continue its work on harmful algal blooms, the restoration of near-shore reefs damaged by nutrient runoff, and
other signs of human impact on the world's oceans. Finding funds Geraldine Knatz, the Port of Los Angeles's executive director — and a former marine
scientist — calls the project “a game changer” that could help revitalize the San Pedro neighborhood that AltaSea will call home. Fifty years ago, more than
100,000 people streamed to the port each day; today, that figure has shrunk to just 16,000. But first, AltaSea's backers will have to continue trawling for cash.
They have raised just $57 million of the estimated $155 million that they will need to pay for the project's first phase, which they hope to complete in 2018.
The Port of Los Angeles is contributing $32 million to upgrade the dock and the Annenberg Foundation in Los Angeles has donated $25 million to kick-start
construction. A second phase of development, including construction of the wave tank, would bring the project's total cost to an estimated $500 million over
20 years. Michaels
says that he isn't worried about raising the extra money. He envisions AltaSea as a hotbed of
research for companies working on aquaculture, algal biofuels , marine sensors and urban
agriculture, and not just as a home for academic scientists. "We're taking a gamble on the real
faith that a facility this unique will create genuine value by bringing everyone together ," he says. Despite
tight federal and state research funding, even would-be competitors — such as the Center for Oceans and Human Health at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography — view AltaSea as a welcome addition. "
Studying the interactions between the ocean and human
health is an emerging area of science ," says Bradley Moore, director of the Scripps centre, which was established last year with a $6million joint grant from the US National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. "If AltaSea can
put more resources towards helping find solutions, that's great."
No warming impact---mitigation and adaptation will solve
Robert O. Mendelsohn 9, the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor, Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies, Yale University, June 2009, “Climate Change and Economic Growth,” online:
http://www.growthcommission.org/storage/cgdev/documents/gcwp060web.pdf
The heart of the debate about climate change comes from a number of warnings from scientists and others that give
the impression that human-induced climate change is an immediate threat to society (IPCC
2007a,b; Stern 2006). Millions of people might be vulnerable to health effects (IPCC 2007b), crop production might fall in the low
latitudes (IPCC 2007b), water supplies might dwindle (IPCC 2007b), precipitation might fall in arid regions (IPCC 2007b), extreme
events will grow exponentially (Stern 2006), and between 20–30 percent of species will risk extinction (IPCC 2007b). Even worse,
there may be catastrophic events such as the melting of Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets causing severe sea level rise, which would
inundate hundreds of millions of people (Dasgupta et al. 2009). Proponents argue there is no time to waste. Unless greenhouse gases
are cut dramatically today, economic growth and well‐being may be at risk (Stern 2006).¶ These
statements are largely
alarmist and misleading . Although climate change is a serious problem that deserves attention, society’s
immediate behavior has an extremely low probability of leading to catastrophic
consequences . The science and economics of climate change is quite clear that emissions over the
next few decades will lead to only mild consequences . The severe impacts
require a century (or two
in the case of Stern 2006)
predicted by alarmists
of no mitigation . Many of the predicted impacts
assume there will be no or little adaptation. The net economic impacts from climate change over the next 50 years
will be small regardless. Most of the more severe impacts will take more than a century or even a
millennium to unfold and many of these “potential” impacts will never occur because people
will adapt . It is not at all apparent that immediate and dramatic policies need to be developed
to thwart long‐range climate risks. What is needed are long‐run balanced responses.
US natural gas boom crowds out algal biofuels
SIO, 04/08/2014 (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “Scripps, UCSD algae biofuel programs rated top in US by DOE”, Biodiesel
Magazine, 04/08/2014, http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/articles/46097/scripps-ucsd-algae-biofuel-programs-rated-top-in-us-by-doe)
The algae biofuel industry has grown significantly since CAB-Comm was founded in 2008 (it was then called the San
Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, SD-CAB), expanding from scientific to commercial interests. Its
development is spurred in part by a desire to wean American dependence on foreign oil, but another
motivation to develop algae biofuel is that it has the potential to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half, because the algae sequester carbon
as they grow and partially offset the carbon released when the biofuel is burned.
Cost is the main factor holding algae
biofuel back , as it’s currently two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels, even when
produced by the largest and most efficient operations. There are some indications that algae biofuel will be costcompetitive with fossil fuels within five years, but investment in large-scale production isn’t likely to happen until
then .
The recent boom in America’s natural gas production enabled by fracking could further
dampen investor interest and slow the development of algae biofuels .
2NC Algae Biofuels Fail
Major roadblocks halt algal biofuels
Buchele, 2012 (Mose Buchele, State Impact writer, “The Downside of Using Algae as a Biofuel”, State Impact, 12/17/2012,
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/12/17/the-downside-of-using-algae-as-a-biofuel/)
This year, people ranging from the President of the United States to this humble reporter, have spoken of algae’s potential in creating a
carbon neutral biofuel. A recent study from the University of Texas showed how the tiny organisms could create 500 times more energy
than they take to grow. And the promise of the slimy green stuff is made even more enticing by the fact that it consumes carbon dioxide,
sewage, and fertilizer run-off. It could, theoretically, clean the planet even as becomes a new source of fuel. Now
comes the
downside. A report by the National Academies of Science has identified major road blocks to the widespread
development of algal biofuel. Chief among them is water use, says Paul Zimba Director for the Center of Coastal
Studies at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Zimba took part in the study. He says “as much as 3000 liters of water” are
required to produce a single liter of fuel when algae growers use open pond systems in arid environments. “There are
commercial operations, open pond system operations in the southwest primarily,” Zimba told StateImpact Texas. He says there’s a general
feeling that water
loss from those systems is too much “to allow the development of large scale systems
Water availability was just one of the challenges to widespread algae cultivation
outlined in the report. Others include finding space for large growing operations, and competition for
fertilizer. “There will be a competitive demand for fertilizers that could affect food production in
terms of being competitive cost-wise for their fertilizer products,” he said.
hundreds of acres along this line.”
Releases more CO2 emissions than other biofuels
Lewis & Peterson, 2013 (Jonathan Lewis- Senior Counsel - Climate Policy & Cameron Peterson- climate policy, “THE STATUS OF ALGAL
BIOFUEL DEVELOPMENT”, Clean Air Task Force, 07/15/2013, http://www.catf.us/resources/whitepapers/files/201307CATF%20Status%20of%20Algal%20Biofuels.pdf)
Lifecycle analyses (LCAs) of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions emitted in the production of algal biofuels are
less than encouraging as well. They tend to range significantly, depending on the study, but can be an order of
magnitude greater than those from other sources. One review of twenty-four LCAs of algal biofuel produced
in open raceway ponds found that the process emitted between 0.1 and 4.4 kg CO2e/kg of algae whereas the
high end of emissions given for biofuels produced by corn, soybeans, and camelina was 0.4, 0.5,
and 0.3 kg CO2e/kg, respectively (Handler et al., 2012, p.89). While only three of the twenty-four LCAs resulted in emissions of more
than 1 kg CO2e/kg of algae, the results demonstrate the potentially negative environmental impacts due to
fossil energy, freshwater, and fertilizer use in algae cultivation. For instance, the LCA study that exhibited
emissions of 4.4 kg CO2e/kg of algae assumed the addition of potassium nitrate, deemed by Handler et al. (2012) as the “the worstperforming N fertilizer in all three of our chosen environmental metrics” (p. 90). This assumption, among many others, generated lifecycle
emissions of more than twice those of any other study that Handler et al. analyzed.
Benefits exaggerated
Hall & Benemann, 2011 (Charles A. S. Hall is at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New
York, and John R. Benemann is with Benemann Associates, Walnut Creek, California, “Oil from Algae?”, BioScience, 10/11/2011,
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/10/741.full)
What is the reality? First, no
oil or other biofuel from algal photosynthesis is currently produced in
commercial quantities or even at the pilot or prepilot scales. At most, a few gallons of samples
seem to have been made. (Fermentation processes, such as those of Solazyme and Martek, which convert sugars or starches to
oil, are an exception, but these are in a fundamentally different category from the autotrophic processes using carbon dioxide and solar
energy that are our focus here.) Second,
many projections for algal oil production are exaggerated . Some
even exceed thermodynamic limits, and most ignore practical realities. Even achieving 20,000 liters per ha per
year of oil would require a major research and development effort, and 40,000 liters per ha per year would appear to
be a likely practical long-term maximum for the United States.
2NC No Warming Impact
No impact to warming
Idso and Idso 11 (Craig D., Founder and Chairman of the Board – Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and
Sherwood B., President – Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the
Prudent Path,” February, http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/ prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf)
As presently constituted, earth’s
atmosphere contains just slightly less than 400 ppm of the colorless and
odorless gas we call carbon dioxide or CO2.
That’s only four-hundredths of one percent . Consequently, even
if the air's CO2 concentration was tripled, carbon dioxide would still comprise only a little over one
tenth of one percent of the air we breathe, which is far less than what wafted through earth’s
atmosphere eons ago, when the planet was a virtual garden place. Nevertheless, a small increase in this minuscule
amount of CO2 is frequently predicted to produce a suite of dire environmental consequences,
including dangerous global warming, catastrophic sea level rise, reduced agricultural output, and the destruction of many natural
ecosystems, as well as dramatic increases in extreme weather phenomena, such as droughts, floods and hurricanes. As strange as it may
seem, these
frightening future scenarios are derived from a single source of information: the everevolving computer-driven climate models that presume to reduce the important physical,
chemical and biological processes that combine to determine the state of earth’s climate into a set
of mathematical equations out of which their forecasts are produced. But do we really know what all of those
complex and interacting processes are? And even if we did -- which we don't -- could we correctly reduce them into manageable computer
code so as to produce reliable forecasts 50 or 100 years into the future? Some people answer these questions in the affirmative. However,
as may be seen in the body of this report, real-world
observations fail to confirm essentially all of the alarming
predictions of significant increases in the frequency and severity of droughts, floods and hurricanes that climate models suggest
should occur in response to a global warming of the magnitude that was experienced by the earth over the past two centuries as it
gradually recovered from the much-lower-than-present temperatures characteristic of the depths of the Little Ice Age. And other
observations have shown that the rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with the development of the Industrial Revolution
have actually been good for the planet, as they have significantly enhanced the plant productivity and vegetative water use efficiency of
earth's natural and agro-ecosystems, leading to a significant "greening of the earth." In the pages that follow, we present this oftneglected evidence via a review of the pertinent scientific literature. In the case of the biospheric benefits of atmospheric CO2
enrichment, we find that with more CO2 in the air, plants grow bigger and better in almost every conceivable way, and that they do it
more efficiently, with respect to their utilization of valuable natural resources, and more effectively, in the face of environmental
constraints. And when plants benefit, so do all of the animals and people that depend upon them for their sustenance. Likewise, in
the
case of climate model inadequacies , we reveal their many shortcomings via a comparison of their
"doom and gloom" predictions with real-world observations. And this exercise reveals that even
though the world has warmed substantially over the past century or more -- at a rate that is claimed by
many to have been unprecedented over the past one to two millennia -- this report demonstrates that none of the
environmental catastrophes that are predicted by climate alarmists to be produced by such a
warming has ever come to pass. And this fact -- that there have been no significant increases in either
the frequency or severity of droughts, floods or hurricanes over the past two centuries or more of
global warming -- poses an important question. What should be easier to predict: the effects of global warming on extreme weather
events or the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperature? The first part of this question should, in
principle, be answerable; for it is well defined in terms of the small number of known factors likely to play a role in linking the independent
variable (global warming) with the specified weather phenomena (droughts, floods and hurricanes). The latter part of the question, on the
other hand, is ill-defined and possibly even unanswerable; for there are many factors -- physical, chemical and biological -- that could well
be involved in linking CO2 (or causing it not to be linked) to global temperature. If, then, today's climate models cannot correctly predict
what should be relatively easy for them to correctly predict (the effect of global warming on extreme weather events), why should we
believe what they say about something infinitely more complex (the effect of a rise in the air’s CO2 content on mean global air
temperature)? Clearly, we
should pay the models no heed in the matter of future climate -- especially in
terms of predictions based on the behavior of a non-meteorological parameter (CO2) -- until they can
reproduce the climate of the past, based on the behavior of one of the most basic of all true meteorological parameters (temperature).
And even if the models eventually solve this part of the problem, we
should still reserve judgment on their forecasts
of global warming; for there will yet be a vast gulf between where they will be at that time and
where they will have to go to be able to meet the much greater challenge to which they aspire
Previous temperature spikes disprove the impact
Singer 11 (S. Fred, Robert M. and Craig, PhD physics – Princeton University and professor of environmental science – UVA,
consultant – NASA, GAO, DOE, NASA, Carter, PhD paleontology – University of Cambridge, adjunct research professor – Marine
Geophysical Laboratory @ James Cook University, and Idso, PhD Geography – ASU, “Climate Change Reconsidered,” 2011 Interim Report
of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Research from locations around the world reveal a significant period of elevated air temperatures
that immediately preceded the Little Ice Age, during a time that has come to be known as the
Little Medieval Warm Period. A discussion of this topic was not included in the 2009 NIPCC report, but we include it
here to demonstrate the existence of another set of real-world data that do not support the IPCC‘s
claim that temperatures of the past couple of decades have been the warmest of the past one to
two millennia. In one of the more intriguing aspects of his study of global climate change over the past three millennia, Loehle (2004)
presented a graph of the Sargasso Sea and South African temperature records of Keigwin (1996) and Holmgren et al. (1999, 2001) that
reveals the existence of a major spike in surface air temperature that began sometime in the early 1400s. This
abrupt and
anomalous warming pushed the air temperatures of these two records considerably above their
representations of the peak warmth of the twentieth century, after which they fell back to pre-spike levels in the
mid-1500s, in harmony with the work of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003), who found a similar period of higher-than-current temperatures
in their reanalysis of the data employed by Mann et al. (1998, 1999).
2NC Natgas Crowds Out
US natural gas crowds out biofuels
Silverstein, 2012 (Ken Silverstein, named one of the Top Economics Journalists by Wall Street Economists & is an award-winning
journalist whose work has been published in more than 100 periodicals and has served as a source for energy stories in The New York
Times, Washington Post, “Will Shale Crowd Out Coal and Green Energy?”, Energy Biz, 01/04/2012,
http://www.energybiz.com/article/12/01/will-shale-crowd-out-coal-and-green-energy)
Now that France’s Total and China’s Sinopec have invested $4.5 billion in two of this country’s premier natural gas developers, common
wisdom is suggesting that the
fate of shale-gas here will outshine all competing energy forms. But is that logic
well considered? Estimates are that at least a century’s worth of shale-gas is now recoverable from
underneath America’s feet. Some are betting that such volume will drive down the cost of that
fuel, making the alternatives unattractive . “With the new abundance and lower prices, lowercarbon gas seems likely to play a much larger role in the generation of electric power,” writes Daniel
Yergin, in his new book “The Quest.” By comparison, nuclear would seem expensive while coal would appear to be more carbon intensive.
Meantime, it creates “a more difficult competitive environment for wind projects.” Yergin, however, is admonishing
policymakers not to rely exclusively on shale-gas. That’s because too many factors can disrupt markets and include everything from
politics to environmental and natural disasters. Shale
will not just become a U.S. phenomenon. But it will also have a
great impact around the globe. Global proven reserves are estimated to be at 6,600 trillion cubic feet , according
to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. China and the United States have the most supplies at 1,275 and 862 trillion cubic feet,
respectively. In this country, for example, shale gas has grown 48 percent a year from 2006 to 2010. It now makes up a third of all natural
gas supplies. The
other countries sitting atop huge swaths of shale gas are Argentina, Mexico, South
Africa and Australia. And while France has such potential, the regulatory environment there is unfriendly to developers and
instead, it is choosing to maintain its reliance on nuclear power. For that reason, Total sees a future in the United States where it has
invested $2.32 billion in Chesapeake Energy in Ohio’s Utica shale region. China’s Sinopec placed a similar amount in Devon Energy. “This is
consistent with our strategy to develop positions in unconventional plays with large potential and, in this case, with value predominantly
linked to oil price,” says Yves-Louis Darricarrere, with Total. “Total is conscious of the environmental aspects linked to developing shale
acreage.” Diversifying Risks In “Quest,” Yergin points to the Japanese nuclear accident and the Arab Spring that caused oil prices to spike
as two geo-political events simultaneously occurred. Both had a tremendous effect on the energy economy. But the energy analyst adds
that shale-gas is most impacted by the environmental issues here. To extract the shale-gas that is embedded inside of rocks, a concoction
of water, sand and chemicals is pumped a mile beneath the earth’s surface. Not only does it take a huge amount of water but the mixture
that comes back to the top is filthy. Many communities have therefore expressed concern about their water quality. Another major fear is
that the production process is more carbon-intensive than that of developing conventional natural gas. And that unease has been
underscored by the International Energy Agency in France that cautions against unguarded heat-trapping emissions and is suggesting
more investment in clean technologies. According to the BP Energy Outlook, global energy consumption will rise by 1.7 percent a year
until 2030. The contribution to energy growth of renewables from solar, wind, geothermal and biofuels is predicted to increase from 5
percent in 2010 to 18 percent by 2030. At the same time, the outlook says that natural
gas is projected to be the fastest
growing fossil fuel while coal and oil are likely to lose market share as all fossil fuels experience
reduced growth rates. Fossil fuels’ contribution to primary energy growth is projected to fall from 83 percent to 64 percent.
US surged natural gas production crowds out biofuels
Daly, 2013 (John Daly, CEO of U.S.-Central Asia Biofuels, “Research Unlocks Algae Biofuel Potential”, Oil Price, 11/25/2013,
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/Research-Unlocks-Algae-Biofuel-Potential.html)
Public health concerns to date have not been compelling enough to warrant severe changes in regulatory oversight. Objective research
about drinking water, earthquake, and waste water risks from the natural gas development should be a high priority. Industry should
realize the importance of public confidence and lead these research efforts. Natural gas developers should adopt prudent, conservative,
industry-wide practices to ensure that risks are minimal. Regulators should be diligent in encouraging independent research and speedy,
responsible reactions to new knowledge including oversight and monitoring.
The impact of the development of natural
gas on renewables is troubling . The potential for solar, wind, biofuels, and other forms of clean,
renewable energy to have a significant and positive impact on our nation is high. But it is an economic
reality that these forms of energy must compete and win in the marketplace.
2NC Not Cost Competitive
Algal biofuels won’t be cost competitive—research now is failing
Milledge, 2010 (John J. Milledge, a Visiting Research Fellow, School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, University of
Southampton, “The Challenge of Algal Fuel: Economic Processing of the Entire Algal Biomass”, Resilience, 02/09/2010,
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-02-09/challenge-algal-fuel-economic-processing-entire-algal-biomass)
Micro-algae have considerable potential for the production biofuel and in particular biodiesel (1). At present the process of producing
fuel from algae would appear to be uneconomic with over 50 algal biofuel companies and none
as yet producing commercial-scale quantities at competitive prices
(2) (3) It has been suggested that the
cost of production needs to be reduced by up to two orders of magnitude to become economic (4).
Others estimate biodiesel from algae costs at least 10 to 30 times more than making traditional
biofuels (5). Algae can be grown in simple open systems or closed systems known as bioreactors (6) (7). Although,
bioreactors can have benefits, their cost may prohibit their use for the production of biofuel. (8) The
cost of producing dry algal biomass in a tubular bioreactor has been given as US $32.16per kg in a
tubular bioreactor (9). Some
estimates have indicated that closed reactor systems will only be able to
compete with crude oil at US$800 per barrel
(US$5 per litre) (10). Solix Biofuels has developed technologies to produce
oil derived from algae, but it costs about $32.81 a gallon (over US$8 per litre) (11).
Algae biofuels won’t be cost competitive in the near-term
Russek, 2010 (Gabriela Russek, India Carbon Outlook writer, “ Algae Biofuels: Possibilities, Uncertainties”, India Carbon Outlook,
01/19/2010, http://india.carbon-outlook.com/content/algae-biofuels-exciting-possibilities-uncertain-future)
COST CONCERNS At this stage, algae biofuels’ cost would have to be drastically reduced to come
anywhere close to competing with current fuel options. The current cost of production for algae
biodiesel is estimated at $10-100/gallon, depending on the production method. Open pools are cheaper; bioreactors are far more expensive but
currently the better method[27]. By comparison, this summer the Indian government set gasoline prices at about $3.50/gallon; and $2.60 for diesel. (Gasoline
and biodiesel have about the same energy per gallon[28]). It
is somewhat unlikely that bioreactors could be scaled up and
become cost competitive. They involve constantly pumping algae through a complex array of
chambers and pipes: expensive to build, and energy-intensive to run. Instead, the challenges of open
pools—invasive species, temperature variability, etc.—will need to be overcome to bring costs
down.[29] It is also essential to find ways to convert the non-oil byproducts, which make up as much as 80% of the algae, into useful commodities—human
or animal food, for instance—and to market them effectively.[30] There is a great deal of speculation about net carbon footprint, expected costs, and fuel
ill-thought-out
overestimates and dour skepticism often are filling in the gap. Anyone making the decision to invest personal or public
production per acre, but algae biofuel technology simply is not at a where we can make accurate predictions. Unsurprisingly,
funds in algae biofuels should be aware of the true level of uncertainty, and decide whether the potential long-run benefits are worth the short-term costs
and the high risk of failure.
2NC No Oil Independence
Won’t make a dent in oil dependence
Hall & Benemann, 2011 (Charles A. S. Hall is at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New
York, and John R. Benemann is with Benemann Associates, Walnut Creek, California, “Oil from Algae?”, BioScience, 10/11/2011,
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/10/741.full)
The greatest challenge may be political: The enormous sums of money recently invested in
microalgae biofuels will soon run out, at just about the time that the new entrants into this field
become able to help advance the technology. Will there be continuing support for this effort in a
year or two, or will politicians, oil companies, and venture capitalists move on to another new
hoped-for solution to our energy crisis? Perhaps the most important fundamental advantage of microalgae biofuels is their
very fast growth rates. A week of algae cultivation is equivalent to a season for higher crops, which suggests that algae biofuel technology
might be developed rapidly. But a
decade is probably the shortest time in which substantial progress can be
made toward the goal of energy-efficient and cost-effective microalgae biofuels production. Even
if there is success, microalgae biofuels will most likely replace only 1
or 2
percent of current oil
use worldwide . Yet even 1 percent of the world oil supply is an enormous amount and would contribute to reducing greenhousegas emissions and improving energy security. We must continue to explore and develop all plausible, environmentally sound, renewable
fuel technologies even while preparing for a future in which transportation fuels are ever more scarce and expensive.
2NC Research Now
Algal biofuel research now
DOE, 06/09/2014 (Department of Energy, “BETO Announces June Webinar: Algal Biofuels Consortium Releases Groundbreaking
Research Results”, DOE, 06/09/2014, http://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/articles/beto-announces-june-webinar-algal-biofuelsconsortium-releases)
BETO will host a live webinar titled “Algal
Biofuels Consortium Releases Groundbreaking Research Results” on
Los Alamos National
Laboratory will present the results of algal biofuels research conducted by the National Alliance
for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB). NAABB is the largest advanced biofuels
consortium ever funded, consisting of 39 institutions from national laboratories, academia, and
industry. Register for the webinar today to reserve your spot!
Wednesday, June 11, 2014, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Dr. Jose Olivares of
Pharmaceutical Advantage
1NC Pharmaceutical Advantage
Pharmaceutical industry is recovering- cost-cutting, downsizing, new products, and
emerging markets- prefer predictive evidence
Dutt 2014 (Arpita Dutt, writer for Zacks, industry stock research engine, March 26, 2014. “Pharma and Biotech Stock Outlook –
March 2014”. http://www.zacks.com/commentary/31869/pharma-biotech-stock-outlook---march-2014)//NR
The pharmaceutical sector has been slowly but steadily recovering from the impact of the patent cliff being faced by
several companies over the past few years. The worst of the patent cliff is over and the NYSE ARCA Pharmaceutical
Index (^DRG) is up 21.4% over the last year. So far in 2014, the index is up 6.9%. Several companies which had been
struggling to post growth in the face of genericization over the past few years are now on the recovery path. New
products should start contributing significantly to results, and increased pipeline visibility and
appropriate utilization of cash should increase confidence in the sector. Products that lost exclusivity recently
include Eli Lilly’s (LLY) Cymbalta and Evista.AstraZeneca’s (AZN) Nexium could also start facing generics from May 2014 in the U.S. where
sales were $2.1 billion in 2013. Collaborations, Acquisitions and Restructuring The pharma sector witnessed major merger and acquisitions
(M&A) activity over the last couple of years. Going forward, we expect small bolt-on acquisitions to continue. In-licensing activities and
collaborations for the development of pipeline candidates have also increased significantly. Several
pharma companies are
focusing on in-licensing mid-to-late stage pipeline candidates that look promising, instead of developing a
product from scratch, which involves a lot of funds and time. Small biotech companies are open to in-licensing
activities and collaborations. Most of these companies find it challenging to raise cash, thereby making it difficult for them to
survive and continue with the development of promising pipeline candidates. Therefore, it makes sense for them to seek deals with
pharma companies that are sitting on huge piles of cash. We recommend biotech stocks that have attractive pipeline candidates or
technology that can be used for the development of novel therapeutics. Therapeutic areas which could see a lot of in-licensing activity
include immuno-oncology, oncology, central nervous system disorders, diabetes and immunology/inflammation. The hepatitis C virus
(HCV) market is also attracting a lot of attention. Some recent acquisitions/deals include Shire’s (SHPG) acquisition of ViroPharma,Salix’s
(SLXP - Analyst Report) acquisition of Santarus as well as the acquisition of Optimer Pharmaceuticals and Trius Therapeutics by Cubist
Pharmaceuticals(CBST) and that of Elan by Perrigo Company (PRGO - Analyst Report). A major acquisition agreement was announced
recently -- that of Forest Labs (FRX) byActavis (ACT). This deal shows the intention of generic companies to establish a strong position in
the branded market. Another significant deal was the one signed between Celgene (CELG) and OncoMed Pharmaceuticals (OMED Snapshot Report) for the joint development and commercialization of up to six anti-cancer stem cell candidates from OncoMed's biologics
pipeline. Another trend that we are seeing in recent months is the divestment of non-core business segments. Pfizer (PFE - Analyst Report)
sold its Capsugel unit and its Nutrition business in Aug 2011 and Nov 2012, respectively. Pfizer then spun off its animal health business into
a new company, Zoetis (ZTS - Analyst Report). Meanwhile, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) divested certain non-core brands from its Consumer
Healthcare segment. In Aug 2011, AstraZeneca sold its Astra Tech business to DENTSPLY (XRAY - Analyst Report). The monetization of noncore assets will allow the pharma/biotech companies to focus on their areas of expertise. Abbott Labs (ABT) split into two separate
publicly traded companies; while one company deals in diversified medical products, the other, AbbVie (ABBV), is focusing on researchbased pharmaceuticals. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is also looking to divest its ortho-clinical diagnostics business. Vertex (VRTX - Snapshot
Report) monetized its Incivo-related royalties; the company can use the cash generated from this deal for its cystic fibrosis program.
Restructuring activities are also gaining momentum as large pharma companies are looking to cut
costs and streamline their operations. Most of these companies are re-evaluating their pipelines and discontinuing
programs which do not have a favorable risk-benefit profile. Some of the companies that announced restructuring plans include Merck
(MRK),Novartis (NVS - Snapshot Report), Eli Lilly, Shire and Sanofi (SNY - Analyst Report). Destination Ireland Of late, several companies
have been looking towards Ireland for acquisitions. The latest company to join the Irish club is Horizon Pharma (HZNP) which is doing a
reverse merger with Dublin-based Vidara. Tax benefits are a major attraction for such deals. Other such recent acquisitions include that of
Warner Chilcott by Actavis and Elan by Perrigo. Emerging Markets and Biosimilars Another trend seen in the pharmaceutical
sector is a focus on emerging markets. Companies like Mylan (MYL - Analyst Report), Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Glaxo and
Sanofi are all looking to expand their presence in India, China, Brazil and other emerging markets. Until recently, most of the
commercialization efforts were focused on the U.S. -- the largest pharmaceutical market -- along with Europe and Japan. Emerging
markets are slowly and steadily gaining more importance, and several companies are now shifting their focus to these
areas. However, while higher demand for medicines, government initiatives for healthcare, new patient population and
increasing use of generics should help drive demand, we point out that emerging markets are also not immune to
genericization. Moreover, investigations into bribery charges in China could put a lid on near-term growth. Meanwhile, growth in Europe
will continue to be pressurized by austerity and cost-containment measures. We are also seeing several companies entering into deals for
the development of biosimilars, generic versions of biologics. Companies like Merck, Amgen, Biogen(BIIB) and Actavis are all targeting the
highly lucrative biosimilars market. 4Q Earnings All companies falling under the Medical sector have reported fourth quarter and full year
2013 results. While earnings-beat and revenue-beat ratios (percentage of companies coming out with positive surprises) were pretty
impressive, growth ratios were modest. Fourth quarter results were characterized by currency headwinds as well as the impact of
generics. Fourth quarter 2013 earnings "beat ratio" was 74.0% while the revenue "beat ratio" was 76.0%. Total earnings for this sector
were up 1.1%, compared to 0.2% recorded in the third quarter of 2013. Total revenues moved up 5.3% in the quarter versus 5.8% growth
in the third quarter of 2013. Looking at the consensus earnings expectations for the first quarter, earnings are expected to decline 3.3%.
Tough challenges for some companies, negative currency movement and a few patent expirees will affect first quarter growth. However,
growth should pick up from the second quarter for which 1.6% earnings growth is expected. Overall, 2014 earnings are expected to grow
6.5%. For a detailed look at the earnings outlook for the Medical and other sectors, please check our Zacks Earnings Trendsreport. Focus
on New Products 2013 saw the FDA approving 27 novel medicines, about one-third (33%) of which were identified by the FDA as “First-inClass,” meaning they use a new and unique mechanism of action for treating a medical condition. These include drugs like Invokana (type
II diabetes), Kadcyla (HER2-positive late-stage breast cancer), Sovaldi (an interferon-free oral treatment for some patients with chronic
hepatitis C) and Mekinist (metastatic melanoma). Yet another one-third of the approved drugs fall under the rare or “orphan” disease
category that affects 200,000 or fewer Americans. These include Imbruvica (mantle cell lymphoma), Gazyva (chronic lymphocytic
leukemia), Kynamro (homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia) and Adempas and Opsumit (both for pulmonary arterial hypertension).
Three of the approved drugs – Gazyva, Imbruvica and Sovaldi – had breakthrough therapy designation. Breakthrough status, a new
designation that became effective after Jul 9, 2012, is designed to cut short the development time of promising new treatments. Some
important products approved in 2013 include: Drugs like Tecfidera, Sovaldi and Imbruvica represent strong commercial potential. So far in
2014, drugs that have gained approval include AstraZeneca’s Myalept (complications of leptin deficiency) and Farxiga (type II diabetes),
Chelsea Therapeutics’ (CHTP) Northera (to treat neurogenic orthostatic hypotension),BioMarin’s (BMRN) Vimizim (Morquio A syndrome)
and Vanda Pharma’s Hetlioz (non-24- hour sleep-wake disorder). Upcoming events include FDA advisory panel review of the regulatory
application forMannKind’s (MNKD) experimental diabetes treatment, Afrezza. April should be an active month with the agency expected
to deliver a response on the approvability of several experimental drugs including Afrezza, Glaxo’s Eperzan (type II diabetes) and Arzerra
(CLL). Zacks Industry Rank Within the Zacks Industry classification, pharma and biotech are broadly grouped into the Medical sector (one
of 16 Zacks sectors) and further sub-divided into four industries at the expanded level: large-cap pharma, med-biomed/gene, med-drugs
and med-generic drugs. We rank all the 260-plus industries in the 16 Zacks sectors based on the earnings outlook and fundamental
strength of the constituent companies in each industry. To learn more, visit: About Zacks Industry Rank. As a point of reference, the
outlook for industries with Zacks Industry Rank #88 and lower is ‘Positive,’ between #89 and #176 is ‘Neutral’ and #177 and higher is
‘Negative.’ The Zacks Industry Rank for large-cap pharma is #225, med-biomed/gene is #69, med-drugs is #84, while the med-generic
drugs is #8. Analyzing the Zacks Industry Rank for different medical segments, it is obvious that the outlook is Positive for med-drugs, medbiomed/gene and med-generic drugs and Negative for large-cap pharma stocks. OPPORTUNITIES While several companies will continue to
face challenges like EU austerity measures and genericization, the
pharma industry is out of the worst of its
genericization phase. Many companies which had faced generic headwinds in the last couple of years should continue to
see a sustained improvement in results this year. Cost-cutting, downsizing, streamlining of the
pipeline, growth in emerging markets and new product launches should support growth. Among
pharma stocks, Shire, a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stock, looks well-positioned for growth with the company expanding its product
portfolio and pipeline through the acquisition of ViroPharma. Horizon Pharma, a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock, also seems on the right path
with the company announcing its plans to acquire Ireland-based Vidara. In the biotech space, we are positive on Biogen. Tecfidera, the
company’s recently launched oral multiple sclerosis drug, is off to a strong start with the product delivering sales of $876 million (as of Dec
31, 2013) since its launch in early April 2013. While Tecfidera has gained the top spot in the oral multiple sclerosis market in the U.S.,
Avonex and Tysabri should continue contributing significantly to sales. Tecfidera gained EU approval recently. Biogen is also progressing
with its hemophilia pipeline. We are also positive on Amgen (AMGN). Amgen should be able to deliver on its long-term strategy based on
expansion in key markets, launch of new manufacturing technologies, and pipeline development. Enbrel should continue performing well.
Amgen’s late-stage pipeline is also moving along. While Amgen is a Zacks Rank #2 stock, Biogen is a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock. Gilead, a
Zacks Rank #1 stock, continues to do well in the HIV segment and has a potential blockbuster in its portfolio in the form of HCV treatment,
Sovaldi. Among generic companies, Actavis looks well-positioned. Actavis is slowly and steadily building its position in the branded market
through acquisitions (Actavis Group, Warner Chilcott and the upcoming acquisition of Forest). With fewer major patent expiries slated to
occur in the next few years, we are encouraged by Actavis’ focus on building its branded and biosimilars pipeline. The company carries a
Zacks Rank #2.
Pharmaceutical industry resilient
Americas Pharma 2008 (Americas Pharma, pharmaceutical research group, 2008. “Pharmaceuticals Remain Resilient In Economic
Crisis”, 11-1, Lexis)//NR
It has been the BMI Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare team's long-held view that the
pharmaceutical industry should
remain resilient to a financial crisis. This belief remains underpinned by wider investor sentiment. Even
including the challenged health insurance sector, the S&P Health Care Index is seeing smaller loses than other industries. The Health Care
Index fell by 31% over the year to October 10. Putting this in context, telecoms stocks are down 46%, energy stocks are down 44% and
financial stocks are down 50%. While the economic crisis has now widened beyond its credit crunch catalyst, the ability to raise finance
remains at the root of the problems faced by the global economy. In this regard, the pharmaceutical industry also remains in good shape.
Drugmakers have reputations for sitting on war chests of cash, making them less reliant on equity
markets for finance. Yet, even those that do need to go to the markets for capital are finding a relatively warm reception - with the
inelastic demand for pharmaceuticals meaning that the industry functions relatively independently of the wider economy.
Recent biotech advances take out the need for the aff- diseases are being cured
and medicine is being developed at an exponential rate
Market Watch 2013 (Market Watch, segment of the Wall Street Journal that reports on recent trend in the economy, November 7,
2013. “The global revolution in biotechnology and the impact of regenerative Medicine.” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-globalrevolution-in-biotechnology-and-the-impact-of-regenerative-medicine-2013-11-07)//NR
Nov 07, 2013 (ACCESSWIRE via COMTEX) -- " This
is the golden age of science ." That's what Mike Milken, chairman of the
Milken Institute, told CNBC's Kelly Evans on Monday during an interview with Milken and National Institute of Health director Francis
Collins at the 5th Annual Partnering for Cures convention at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan. Francis Collins referenced healthcare
as
being in an evolutionary period and noted that steps need to be taken for the United States to maintain a world leadership
position. "When you look at the rest of the world, they have read America's playbook and have seen how success happened and they are
trying to become what we used to be," commented Collins. In our view, a
cornerstone in a robust U.S. (and global)
biotechnology ecosystem is regenerative medicine and many of the next generation treatments that cellbased therapeutics has to offer. The rapidly growing field as an adjunctive or front line treatment embodies a new
wave of therapies to meet countless areas of great unmet medical need where legacy, small molecule-based drugs
are showing limited impact, or facing extreme challenges. This impact is being recognized globally - a good example is
Japan, which has embraced the potential of regenerative medicine and is actively seeking to establish itself as a global leader in the area. It
has earmarked regenerative medicine specifically, announcing
$3.2 billion in funding for programs to advance
the area, using pluripotent stem cells and other approaches. In the annual "Meeting on the Mesa," a three-day convention of world
leaders and investors in regenerative medicine held in La Hoya, California last month, Dr. Gil Van Bokkelen, Chief Executive Officer and
Chairman of Athersys, Inc. ATHX -2.80% touched not only on the initiatives of Japan, and global potential of the field of regenerative
medicine, but also the unique potential of Athersys'MultiStem(R) technology. Interested investors can watch the entire video interview on
YouTube here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO6rd3fWgKc Dr. Van Bokkelen noted that MultiStem is being developed as an "off
the shelf" medicine, or in technical terms an "allogeneic" stem cell therapy that can be manufactured on a large scale,
stored for years in frozen form, and administered without tissue matching or immune suppressive drugs. Athersys is developing the
technology for several indication areas, including some that are recognized by analysts and pundits as having breakthrough
potential . Current clinical programs include, ischemic stroke, acute myocardial infarction, preventing Graph versus Host Disease
(GvHD) and treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in patients where other medicines have proven ineffective. This latter program is
part of an ongoing international Phase II trial in partnership with Pfizer, Inc. PFE -0.12% for treatment-refractory inflammatory bowel
disease, with results expected in early 2014. New treatments for a condition like IBD, focusing on patients where other therapies have
proven ineffective, could validate the potential of regenerative medicines to reverse the course of an advanced disease, at a time when
treatment expenses skyrocket and quality of life deteriorates dramatically. In fact, a hallmark feature of regenerative medicine is its
apparent utility in addressing areas of substantial unmet medical need, where the cost burden is high. Success from ongoing or planned
MultiStem trials, especially for an area like ischemic stroke, could provide a powerful catalyst for Athersys shares.Top-line results from the
IBD trial are expected in the first quarter of 2014, with results from the stroke clinical trial expected several months later. As noted by Dr.
Van Bokkelen's presentation, MultiStem has great potential as a novel therapeutic approach for conditions where current standards of
care are essentially non-existent or ineffective. One of the reasons for this is the multimodal activity of MultiStem, which addresses key
shortcomings of traditional drugs or technologies that typically focus on a single mechanism of action. He notes that cells are different
because they are capable of promoting healing in several ways, such as by expressing factors that reduce inflammatory damage, protect
and preserve tissue that is at risk following an injury, promote formation of new blood vessels in regions of inadequate blood supply, and
by stimulating recovery in other ways. Recent deal activity also suggests growing acceptance of regenerative medicine technologies,
including the Cytori Therapeutics, Inc. CYTX -0.89% partnership to commercialize technology in Australia and Asia, and the recent
Mesoblast, Inc. (asx:MSB) acquisition of the rights to the Osiris Therapeutics, Inc. OSIR -0.57% Prochymal franchise. With new regulatory
initiatives in Japan and other countries poised to speed development options for companies focused on clinical development of new
medicines, it seems that regenerative medicine is now beyond its flash point. The
tremendous potential is now being
recognized in multiple areas around the world, including in some corners of Wall Street.
No extinction – diseases favor limited lethality and medicine will check
Posner 2004 (Richard Posner, Judge at the US Court of Appeals, Catastrophe: Risk and Response, p. 22-24)//NR
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of
its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously
destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying
the entire human race. There is a biological reason. Natural selection favors germs of limited
lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too
quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its
spread. Yet there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race. The
likelihood of a natural pandemic that
would cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric
times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite wider human
contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease. The reason is improvements in medical science.
But the comfort is a small one. Pandemics can still impose enormous losses and resist prevention and cure: the lesson of the AIDS
pandemic. And there is always a lust time.
Burn out stops disease
Lederberg 1999 (Joshua Lederberg, Professor of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine, Epidemic The World of
Infectious Disease, p. 13)//NR
The toll of the fourteenth-century plague, the "Black Death," was closer to one third. If the bugs' potential to develop adaptations that
could kill us off were the whole story, we would not be here. However, with very rare exceptions, our microbial adversaries have a
shared interest in our survival. Almost any pathogen comes to a dead end when we die; it first has to
communicate itself to another host in order to survive. So historically, the really severe host- pathogen
interactions have resulted in a wipeout of both host and pathogen. We humans are still here because, so far, the
pathogens that have attacked us have willy-nilly had an interest in our survival. This is a very delicate balance, and it is easily
disturbed, often in the wake of large-scale ecological upsets.
2NC Pharmaceutical Industry UQ
Pharmaceutical industry is growing in the squo- new medicines, govt. subsidies,
new R&D, and new markets
SelectUSA 2014 (SelectUSA, domestic based market analyst group, May 23, 2014. “The Pharmaceutical and Biotech industries in the
United States.” http://selectusa.commerce.gov/industry-snapshots/pharmaceutical-and-biotech-industries-united-states)//NR
The United States is the world’s largest market for pharmaceuticals and the world leader in
biopharmaceutical research. According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), U.S. firms
conduct the majority of the world’s research and development in pharmaceuticals and hold the
intellectual property rights on most new medicines. The biopharmaceutical pipeline also has over 5,000 new
medicines
currently in
development around the world with approximately 3,400 compounds currently being studied in the
United States - more than in any other region around the world. More than 810,000 people work in the
biopharmaceutical industry in the United States as of 2012, and the industry supports a total of nearly
3.4 million jobs across the U.S. economy, including jobs directly in biopharmaceutical companies, jobs with vendor
companies in the broad biopharmaceutical supply chain, and jobs created by the economic activity of the biopharmaceutical industry
workforce. The biopharmaceutical sector is one of the most research and development (R&D)-intensive in the United States, with
companies investing more than 10 times the amount of R&D per employee than all manufacturing industries overall. The
markets
for biologics, over-the-counter (OTC) medicines, and generics show the most potential for growth and have
become increasingly competitive. Biologics account for a quarter of all new drugs in clinical trials or awaiting U.S. Food and
Drug Administration approval. OTC market growth will be driven by a growing aging population and consumer trend to self-medication,
and the conversion of drugs from prescription to non-prescription or OTC status. The U.S. market is the world’s largest free-pricing market
for pharmaceuticals and has a favorable patent and regulatory environment. Product success is largely based on competition in product
quality, safety and efficacy and price. U.S.
government support of biomedical research, along with its
unparalleled scientific and research base and innovative biotechnology sector, make the U.S.
market the preferred home for growth in the pharmaceutical industry.
Pharmaceutical companies are recovering- growth rates are up and will sustain
Business Line 2014 (The Hindu Business Line, latest news on India and international business and finance, January 5, 2014.
“Pharma cos likely to post 15% profit growth in Q3.” http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/pharma-cos-likely-topost-15-profit-growth-in-q3/article5541288.ece//NR
Pharmaceutical companies are expected to post core profit growth of over 15 per cent year-on-year
for
the quarter ended December 2013. “We expect core profit growth of over 15 per cent y-o-y across the pharmaceutical sector in Q3 FY14.
The US launches and currency benefit will be the key growth drivers,” Kotak Institutional Equities said in its
report. While the domestic growth stays subdued, the US launches remain strong, it said. It expects the
US generic launches to be the key growth driver, offsetting weak growth in India. Improving US product mix
and currency remain key margin drivers for Indian generics, according to the report. “The currency benefit is likely to
sustain . In the current quarter, the Indian rupee has appreciated by 1 per cent sequentially on a quarter-end basis. Hence, we expect
marginal impact due to translation impact of net balance-sheet items and MTM losses on foreign currency hedges,” said Kotak Equities
research analyst Krishna Prasad. Among the leading pharma players, Sun Pharma and Dr Reddy’s will lead the sector, while Lupin US
generics growth is expected to remain strong, it said, adding that Kotak expects a stable growth for Glenmark and remains conservative on
recovery in Cipla and Cadila in the third quarter of 2013-14 fiscal (Q3 FY’14), the report said. “We expect core profit growth of over 15 per
cent y-o-y across the sector except Cipla. Sun Pharma and Dr Reddy’s will lead the pack — with 45 per cent and 33 per cent y-o-y net profit
growth, respectively. In both cases, we expect US generics to be the primary growth driver along with currency,” Prasad said. “For Lupin,
we estimate 13 per cent y-o-y growth in EBITDA, while a PAT growth of 26 per cent is driven by lower tax rate. We expect strong margin
expansion for Dr Reddy’s (360 bps y-o-y) driven by US launches,” the Kotak report said. A gradual recovery is expected for
Cadila and Cipla, it said, adding that it does not factor in significant improvement in operational performance for the current quarter. “We
estimate sharp recovery in core EBITDA margin for Ranbaxy at 9 per cent driven by lower remediation expense. We expect stable earnings
performance for Glenmark with 19 per cent y-o-y growth in core net profit,” the report said. For Lupin, the strong growth in US generics is
partially offset by muted performance in India/Japan leading to a marginal decline (40 bps) in EBITDA margin, Prasad said.
Pharma sector growing now- exports, new products, and investor confidence
Kabtta 2013 (Kiran Kabtta, Market News reporter, Novermber 28, 2013. “Pharma sector: Export gains, domestic bounce-back augur
well”. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-11-28/news/44547025_1_sun-pharma-indian-companies-domesticmarket)//NR
Drug makers posted healthy results in the quarter to September due to their strong performance in the
United States largely because of rupee depreciation. High realisations from exports more than compensated for
the subdued performance in the domestic market, where trade-related disruptions and price revisions after the
implementation of the new drug pricing policy took their toll on the pharmaceutical companies. Most companies reported
over 25% growth in their US business compared with the year-ago period. Increased sales from exclusive
product launches, besides the favourable currency movement, boosted the performance of several firms. Sun Pharma,
Lupin, Dr Reddy's Labs, Cadila Healthcare and Aurobindo Pharma posted gains in their US business during the three-month period. In the
domestic market, however, most companies remained confined to single-digit growth. Multinational companies such as GSK Pharma,
Pfizer and Novartis, which earn a dominant share of their revenues from the Indian market, were the biggest losers on this count while
Indian companies such as Sun Pharma and Glenmark stood out as outperformers with strong double-digit growth. Companies in contract
research and manufacturing services have been facing challenges, including pricing pressure, increased raw material prices and slowdown
in business. Even so, Divi's Labs and Dishman Pharma managed to post betterthan-expected results.
continues to be positive.
The outlook for the sector
Export realisations are expected to improve as the rupee is hovering around the same level. In the
domestic market, the worst seems to be over with the settlement of margin-related issues between companies and the drug distributors.
Growth in the domestic market is also expected to bounce back to double-digit levels. Sun Pharma is
expected to continue to be the industry outperformer, followed by companies such as Lupin and Dr Reddy's Labs. These companies
have strong product pipelines and sound base business in their key markets. Despite the positive outlook,
stretching stock valuations have led to correction in stocks of leading pharma companies such as Sun Pharma, Cipla and Lupin over the
past month. Investors seem to be booking short-term profits in these defensive stocks even as pharma companies are expected to
continue on the growth trajectory
2NC Oceans Not Key
Tropical rainforests solve the aff- they have massive amounts of bio-d and
potential to cure a litany of diseases
Halter 2010 (Reese Halter, writer for the Huffington Post, September 2, 2010. “Stupendous tropical rainforests offer medicine and
fight global warming”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-reese-halter/stupendous-tropical-rainf_b_700909.html)//NR
The breathtaking luxuriant tropical
rainforests occupy about 13 percent of Earth's surface. These incredibly
complex and diverse ecosystems account for half of the known biological diversity (about 800,000 different
species), and conservatively there are at least another 9.2 million species yet to be discovered. The world's
tropical forests can be divided into four major regions. The American tropical forest region includes part of South America, Central
America, the Galapagos Islands and the Caribbean. The African tropical forest region encompasses the Zaire Basin, the coastlands of West
Africa, the uplands of East Africa and Madagascar. The Indo-Malaysian tropical forest region occupies parts of India, Burma, the Malay
Peninsula and many of the Southeastern Asian islands. The Australasian tropical forest region spreads over Northeast Australia, New
Guinea and the adjacent Pacific Islands. Some consider the Hawaiian Islands a smaller fifth region. There are five types of tropical climates:
rainy tropics, monsoonal tropics, wet-and-dry tropics, tropical semi-arid and tropical arid climate. Irrespective of the hemisphere they all
occur within 23 degrees of the equator. Most of these forests have rainfall that at least exceeds 79 inches. Rainforests significantly
influence rainfall. About 75 percent of rainfall evaporates directly or via the trees, and provides most of the moisture for cloud formation
and rain further inland. Deforestation near the coast breaks this cycle and denies rainfall to inland tropical forests. The complexity of
millions of organisms interacting in tropical rainforests can perhaps only be matched by that of underwater life in some coral reefs.
Tropical rainforests contain big, tall trees some in excess of 230 feet with flaring buttresses and a bizarre array of aerial roots. Canopies are
rich with life: woody climbers resemble elaborate scaffolds; stranglers surround the trunks of trees; liverworts (leafy-looking moss-like
plants) over-grow leaf blades; orchids grow in the crown humus; ants feed from flowers; bees and other insects including ants pollinate
flowers; birds and bats disseminate seeds, rodents feed on fruits and leopards prey on small mammals. Most tropical soils are extremely
low in nutrients. How are they able to support such rich plant life? Ants, in large part, greatly assist in helping to break down leaves, twigs,
fallen trunks and dead animals thereby recycling nutrients which are immediately taken-up by tree roots. When tropical forests are
removed the soils cannot support luxuriant growth. The natural occurrence of fire in tropical rainforests can occur from lightning and
along the edges of lava flows and from hot ash from active volcanoes. The natural frequency of fires in tropical rainforests is rare. Usually
rainforests are saturated and fire does not spread far. However, the fierce El Nino of 1998 brought extreme drought conditions to
Southeast Asian forests which enabled massive fire to decimate 24,957,646 acres of forestland. Why are tropical rainforests so rich with so
many different plant and animal species? These
forests contain an awesome potential for new forms of life to
develop or a process known as speciation. New species arise from isolated populations. These new species result from either a
successful mutation or recombination of existing genes that have adapted to a change in the physical environment. Is there a higher rate
of successful mutations in the tropics? Yes. Why? The levels of ultra-violet-B radiation (from the sun) are naturally the highest at the
equator and within the range of the tropical forest regions compared to all other forest types on Earth. And ultra-violet radiation (which
promotes cataracts and skin caner in humans) also promotes plant mutations and hence the rate of tropical speciation is greater than
anywhere else on the globe. Speciation increases diversity and steps-up natural selection which results in the progress of evolution.
Tropical forests also contain a cornucopia of potent medicines to combat cardiovascular and
neurological diseases and cancers . In addition, drugs like quinine from the South American cinchona tree fight
malaria; vincristine and vinblastine from the Madagascar rose periwinkle offer hope to those afflicted with pediatric
leukemia and Hodgkin's disease; active ingredients in Central and South American dart-poison frogs fight cardiac
arrhythmias, Alzheimer's disease, myasthenia gravis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Tropical forests
are being felled at an astounding rate -- a thousand times greater than those which occur naturally -- approximately 55,000 square miles a
year. This is equivalent to the area of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined or to the size of a football field that is lost senselessly
every second of each day of the year. Each year we are loosing at least 27,000 unknown species with unknown medicinal potentials.
Currently,
25 percent of all medicines are derived from tropical plants and animals . As climate change
unfolds, scientists have predicted more, and more intense, wild weather around the globe. Recently, a half a billion trees were blown over
in one horrendous Amazon storm. The incidences of diseases will skyrocket. The loss of biological diversity from tropical rainforests will
impede researchers from finding cures to those diseases. Tropical rainforest ecosystems must be protected, if not for us then certainly for
our children.
2NC No Disease Impact
No impact to disease
Brooks 2012 (Michael Brooks, Consultant for New Scientist, “Deep future: Why we'll still be here,” New Scientist, Volume 213, Issue
2854, March, p. 36–37, Science Direct)//NR
We are also unlikely to be extinguished by a killer virus pandemic. The worst pandemics occur
when a new strain of flu virus spreads across the globe. In this scenario people have no immunity,
leaving large populations exposed. Four such events have occurred in the last 100 years – the
worst, the 1918 flu pandemic, killed less than 6 per cent of the world's population . More will
come, but disease-led extinctions of an entire species only occur when the population is confined
to a small area, such as an island. A severe outbreak will kill many millions but there is no
compelling reason to think any future virus mutations will trigger our total demise .
No extinction- disease would have to be extremely durable, stealthy, and
contagious- that doesn’t happen
Gladwell 1999 (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Republic, July 17 and 24, 1995, excerpted in “Epidemics: Opposing Viewpoints”, p. 3132)//NR
Every infectious agent that has ever plagued humanity has had to adapt a specific strategy but every
strategy carries a
corresponding cost and this makes human counterattack possible. Malaria is vicious and deadly but it relies on mosquitoes
to spread from one human to the next, which means that draining swamps and putting up mosquito netting can all hut halt endemic
malaria. Smallpox is extraordinarily durable remaining infectious in the environment for years, but its very durability its essential rigidity is
what makes it one of the easiest microbes to create a vaccine against. AIDS is almost invariably lethal because it attacks the body at its
point of great vulnerability, that is, the immune system, but the fact that it targets blood cells is what makes it so relatively uninfectious.
Viruses are not superhuman. I could go on, but the point is obvious. Any microbe capable of wiping us all out would have to
be everything at once: as contagious as flue, as durable as the cold, as lethal as Ebola, as stealthy as HIV and so
doggedly resistant to mutation that it would stay deadly over the course of a long epidemic. But viruses are
not, well, superhuman. They cannot do everything at once. It is one of the ironies of the analysis of alarmists such as
Preston that they are all too willing to point out the limitations of human beings, but they neglect to point out the limitations of
microscopic life forms.
No specie has ever died from disease
Regis 1997 (Ed Regis, author, 1997. “Pathogens of Glory”, New York Times, 5-18, Lexis)//NR
Despite such horrific effects, Dr. Peters is fairly anti-apocalyptic when it comes to the ultimate import of viruses. Challenging the
widespread perception that exotic viruses are doomsday agents bent on wiping out the human
species, he notes that "we have not documented that viruses have wiped out any species." As for the
notion that we're surrounded by "new" diseases that never before existed, he claims that "most new
diseases turn out to be old diseases"; one type of hantavirus infection, he suggests, goes back to A.D. 960. And in contrast to
the popular belief that viral epidemics result from mankind's destruction of the environment, Dr. Peters shows how the elimination of a
viral host's habitat can eradicate a killer virus and prevent future epidemics. This is what happened when the Aswan Dam, completed in
1971, destroyed the floodwater habitat of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, carriers of Rift Valley fever virus: "After the Aswan Dam was
constructed, there was no more alluvial flooding. . . . Without a floodwater mosquito, the virus can't maintain itself over the long haul. . . .
By 1980, Rift Valley fever had essentially disappeared in Egypt." Still, Dr. Peters isn't totally averse to doomsday thinking, and in his final
chapter he lays out his own fictional disease scenario, in which a mystery virus from Australia suddenly breaks out in a Bangkok slum.
Throw in Malthus, chaos theory and the high mutation rates of RNA viruses, and soon he's got the world teetering on the brink of viral
holocaust in the finest Hollywood tradition. But he doesn't know quite what to make of his own scenario. He offers "one valid, simplified
equation to describe what we can expect from viruses in the future": mutating viruses plus a changing ecology plus increasing human
mobility add up to more and worse infectious diseases. Two pages later, though, he says that "it is impossible to gauge how the actions of
man will impact on emerging infectious diseases." If that is true, it discredits the very equation he's given us. In the end, he presents no
clear or consistent picture of the overall threat posed by the viruses he discusses. The
empirical fact of the matter is that
today's most glamorous viruses -- Marburg and Ebola -- have killed minuscule numbers of people
compared with the staggering death rates of pathogens that go back to disease antiquity. Marburg virus,
discovered in 1967, has been known to kill just 10 people in its 30-year history; Ebola has killed approximately 800 in the 20 years since it
appeared in 1976. By contrast, malaria, an ancient illness, still kills a worldwide average of one million people annually -- more than 2,700
per day. More than
three times as many people die of malaria every day than have been killed by Ebola
virus in all of history. Yet it's Ebola that people find "scary"!
Humans will adapt
Gladwell 1995 (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Republic, July 17. “Excerpted in Epidemics: Opposing Viewpoints”, p. 29)//NR
In Plagues and Peoples, which appeared in 1977. William MeNeill pointed out that…while man’s
efforts to “remodel” his environment are sometimes a source of new disease. They are seldom a
source of serious epidemic disease. Quite the opposite. As humans and new microorganisms
interact, they begin to accommodate each other. Human populations slowly build up resistance to
circulating infections. What were once virulent infections, such as syphilis become attenuated. Over
time, diseases of adults, such as measles and chicken pox, become limited to children, whose
immune systems are still naïve.
Quarantines check extinction
Pharma Investments 2005 (Pharma Investments, analyst group on pharmaceutical industry, 2005. “SARS; Quarantine is cost
saving and effective in containing emerging infections” Lexis)//NR
Quarantine is cost saving and effective in containing emerging infections. "Over time, quarantine has
become a classic public health intervention and has been used repeatedly when newly emerging
infectious diseases have threatened to spread throughout a population. "Here, we weigh the
economic costs and benefits associated with implementing widespread quarantine in Toronto during
the SARS outbreaks of 2003," scientists writing in the Journal of Infection report. "We compared the costs of two
outbreak scenarios: in Scenario A, SARS is able to transmit itself throughout a population without
any significant public health interventions. In Scenario B, quarantine is implemented early on in an
attempt to contain the virus. "By evaluating these situations, we can investigate whether or not the
use of quarantine is justified by being either cost-saving, life saving, or both," wrote A.G. Gupta and colleagues at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Our results indicate that quarantine is effective in containing newly
emerging infectious diseases, and also cost saving when compared to not implementing a widespread containment
mechanism," the authors said. Gupta concluded, "This paper illustrates that it is not only in our humanitarian interest for public health and
healthcare officials to remain aggressive in their response to newly emerging infections, but also in our collective economic interest.
Despite somewhat daunting initial costs, quarantine saves both lives and money." Gupta and colleagues published their study in the
Journal of Infection (The economic impact of quarantine: SARS in Toronto as a case study. J Infect, 2005;50(5):386-393).
Environment Advantage
1NC Environment Advantage
All elements of the marine ecosystem are resilient and recovering now –
new regulations solve
Lotze et al. 11
Dr. Heike Lotz – Canada Research Chair in Marine Renewable Energy, associate professor for
Marine Ecology at Dalhousie University, recipient of the prestigious Peter Benchley Award for
Excellence in Science, author of numerous celebrated journal articles in relevant publications;
Dr. Marta Coll – postdoctoral fellow at the institute of Marine Science, researcher at the Marine
Exploited Ecosystems mixed research unit, writer of various papers published in reputable
journals; Dr. Laura Airoldi – associate professor in evolutionary biology at the University of
Bologna in Italy, member of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, member of the
Society for Conservation Biology, Ph. D. in Environmental Sciences from the University of
Genova in Italy etc.
(“Recovery of marine animal populations and ecosystems”, November 2011, http://ac.elscdn.com/S0169534711002060/1-s2.0-S0169534711002060-main.pdf?_tid=00c20ae8-079e11e4-a468-00000aacb35e&acdnat=1404933772_8f7f837a2f1f6f95f8b7639da0389303)//EO
The response variables can be analyzed over time to esti-mate the magnitude, rate and time span of change from a disturbed state
or low point (Figure lb). To place
recovery into context, it can be useful to relate these measures
to the magnitude, rate and time span of former depletion or degradation, or to scale them
to an expected rate of re-sponse, such as population growth rate, generation time or
succession rate (Box 1). In addition, they should be viewed in the context of natural population
fluctuations that can enhance or dampen recovery. Clearly stating which mea-sure is
used will enable further comparisons and syntheses across species and ecosystems.
Examples of population and ecosystem recovery Over the past decades, an increasing
number of studies have reported recoveries of depleted marine populations and
degraded ecosystems. We first provide a selection of examples and then synthesize the general patterns. Marine
mammals After the League of Nations banned the commercial whal-ing of strongly decimated right,
bowhead and gray whales during the 1930s, some populations started to recover [e.g. Southern right
whales Eubalaena australis, Western Arc-tic bowhead whales Balaena mysticetus (Figure 2a) and Northeast
Pacific gray whales Eschrkhtius robustusJ, whereas others remained at low population levels [25,33,34]. In 1986, the
International Whaling Commission expanded the commercial whaling moratorium to all
great whales, leading to increases in other species, such as sperm Physeter macrocephalus [35] and blue
whales Balaenoptera musculus 1361. Similarly, several populations of pinnipeds and other marine
mammals started to increase after the hunting for fur, skin, blubber, ivory or bounty was
either prohibited or reduced [3] (Anna M. Magera, MSc thesis, Dalhousie University, 2011). Some populations
showed remarkable population increases after being almost extir-pated, such as Northern
elephant seals Mirounga angu-stkostris 1371 and sea otters Enhydra lutris (Box 2)138,391. Birds Conservation
efforts for birds began during the early 20th century, after a long history of exploitation for
their meat, eggs, feathers and oil left many species at very low abun-dance 131. The near extinction of the great blue
heron Ardea herodias was prevented in the USA by the Federal Lacey Act in 1900, which prohibited the
trade of highly valued feathers [40]. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act between the USA and Great
Britain in 1918 protected a range of migratory birds from hunting, egg collection and nest destruction [40]. Over
time, many countries implemented similar conventions to protect birds and their
habitats, enabling many decimated populations to increase (Figure 2b) [41-43], albeit rarely to
historical levels [3]. Some species naturally recolonized abandoned breeding colonies or habitats
from which they had been extirpated 142,43], whereas others needed assisted re-introduction 142] or formed
new colonies at suitable sites [41]. In some cases, eradication of rats, foxes, raccoons or other human-introduced predators was
necessary to restore seabird colonies [42,44]. Another important
factor in the recovery of many birds was the ban
of DDT during the 1970s [40]. Reptiles Over the past 25 years, six major green turtle Chelonia mydas nesting
populations in Japan, Australia, Hawaii, Florida and Costa Rica have been increasing by
3.8-13.9% per year following protection from human exploitation of eggs and turtles
(Figure 2c) [45). Other sea turtle species have also shown some increases, although most are far from historical abundance levels
and are listed as threat-ened or endangered 140,45,46). By contrast, more offshore-venturing loggerhead Caretta caretta and
leatherback Der-mochelys coriacea turtles have experienced strong popula-tion declines owing to being bycatch in fisheries 147).
Other marine reptiles have also shown recovery, such as the American alligator Alligator
mississippiensis in the south-east USA, owing to legal protection under the US Endan-gered Species
Act and bans on hunting and trade [e.g. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) [40)).
Fishes Over the past decade, stricter management and improved governance have
enabled the rebuilding of some fish popu-lations, whereas others remain at low population numbers (8,9).
After severe declines of groundfish stocks, a large-scale fishing closure on Georges Bank in 1992
resulted in a strong increase of haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus (81, whereas a fishing moratorium for cod
Gadus morhua in Atlantic Canada after its collapse during the early 1990s has not yet resulted in significant recovery (201. In the
Southern California Bight, a ban of gill nets in 1994 resulted in the slow recovery of strongly
depleted white sea bass Atractoscion nobilis and other predatory fishes (Figure 2d) (48). Similarly, the ban of
beach seine nets in combination with closed areas resulted in marked increases in fish
abundance in Kenya [49). In the North-west Atlantic, profitability cessation of foreign fishing
enabled the porbeagle shark Lamna nasus to recover after its stock collapsed during the 1960s, but
renewed Canadi-an fisheries during the 1990s again depleted the popula-tion, until recent management measures halted its decline
(50). For diadromous fishes, recovery efforts often need to address multiple threats. Reduction of river pollution and creation of fish
ladders on dams to access spawning habitat enabled strong returns of gaspereau Alosa spp. and Atlan-tic salmon Salmo solar in the
St. Croix River, Canada during the 1980s before some dams were closed again in 1995 (42). The recent removal of dams on the
Kennebec River in Maine also resulted in strong returns of several diadromous fish species (51). Habitats Around
the
world, increasing efforts are directed towards the protection and restoration of coastal
habitats, such as wetlands, mangroves, seagrass beds, kelp forests, and oyster and coral
reefs. Some have achieved at least partial recovery, whereas others have not. For example, the re-duction of nutrient
pollution resulted in the recovery of 27 km2 of seagrass beds in Tampa Bay, Florida [52), 25 ha in
Mumford Cove, Connecticut (Figure 3a) (53), and a more than threefold increase of seagrass beds
up to 100 km2 in the Northfrisian Wadden Sea, Germany from 1994-2006 1541. In Mondego Bay, Portugal,
seagrass recovered from 0.02 to 1.61=2 from 1997 to 2002 following management actions to
restore water quality and estuarine circulation and to reduce disturbance from fishing
practices 1551. Recovery can be more difficult when the former vegeta-tion has been lost. In the Delmarva Coastal Bays, USA,
eelgrass Zodera marina showed natural recovery after the 1930s wasting disease and hurricane destruction in the four northern
bays, probably from small remnant stands 1561. By contrast, no recovery occurred in the southern bays, owing to seed limitation,
before active restoration efforts. This is one of a few examples where restoration of lost seartiess beds has been successful 161. On
many tem-perate coasts, kelp forests have recovered from deforesta-tion by sea urchins
after sea urchin populations were reduced by natural predators (e.g. sea otters, Box 2), fishing or
disease 1571. By contrast, where kelp forests have been replaced by algal turfs, sediments or mussel beds, recovery potential seems
limited even when the proximate drivers of loss are removed 158,591, but assisted restoration can help 1161. For non-vegetated
habitats, such as oyster and coral reefs, recovery has also been difficult 160,611. However, the
potential for
recovery of native oyster reefs is emerging from restoration efforts at several key
localities within Chesapeake Bay, Pamlico Sound. Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland and the Limftord. Denmark
171. Marine reserves can also help. Recovery of coral cover and size distribution after bleaching and
hurricane disturbance was significantly enhanced inside a marine reserve in the Bahamas compared to
outside, owing to higher abun-dance of herbivorous fishes and resulting lower macroalgal
cover 1621. However, recovery might depend on the type. strength and timescale of the disturbance. Whereas some coral reefs
might be able to recover from short-term bleach-ing and hurricane events within decades 1631, recovery from long-term reef
degradation might take centuries or longer 12.641. Wafer Quality Unregulated discharges of wastes and waste waters into rivers
and estuaries have caused strong pollution pro-blems, resulting in the decline or disappearance of many species, some of which
have been successfully reversed 140,42,65,661. For example, the implementation of pollu-tion controls in the Thames estuary, UK
during the 1960s enhanced water quality, especially oxygen levels, en-abling the return of estuarine fishes (Figure Sb) 1131. A 10x
reduction of nitrogen loads in Tampa Bay, Florida during the late 1970s led to decreasing cyanobacterial blooms, increasing water
clarity and, 10 years later, the return of seagrasses 113,521. Reduced nutrient loads also contributed to seagrass recovery in several
other areas (Figure 3a) 1531. Water quality has also been restored with pollution controls in Galveston
Bay and with the unintentional help of invasive clams in San Francisco Bay 1401. Long-terra studies, however, show that suble-thal
effects and shifts in community structure can persist long after the recovery of target species abundance or ecosystem processes
1651. Species diversity Although there are
increasing numbers of examples of individual population
recoveries, attempts and studies of recovery at a community or ecosystem level are scarce. However, some examples
demonstrate the possibility of multi-species recoveries. Restoration of water quality
resulted in the return of >110 fish species to the Thames estuary (Figure Sb) 1131 and the
recovery of intertidal macroalgal communities from 1984 to 2006 after imple-menting
sewage treatment in Bilbao, Spain 1661. Cessation of exploitation in marine protected areas
(MPAs) around the world resulted in significant increases in species rich-ness of fishes and
invertebrates 115,221 and habitat resto-ration of oyster reefs has enhanced associated
species diversity 1671. Ecosystem structure, functions end services In addition to species diversity, some
studies have further demonstrated the recovery of structural or functional eco-system
components following protection measures. A large-scale fishing closure on Georges Bank during the
1990a enabled the recovery of the entire benthic commu-nity 191 and strongly reduced exploitation rates
have led to the rebuilding of the fish community biomass in the Cali-fornia Current since 2000 191. Restoration of kelp
along Korean coasts resulted in the complete recovery of macro-algal community
structure and trophic food webs 1161. Studies in MPAs illustrate successional recovery of
differ-ent community components (Figure 3c) as well as re-es-tablishment of lost predatory
interactions and food-web structure 114.15.68,691. Moreover, significant increases occurred in
secondary productivity, ecosystem stability and economic revenue from recreational diving in 48
MPAs and fisheries closures worldwide 1221. In Kenya, fishers' catches and income strongly increased after the
establish-ment of dosed areas combined with beach seine bans 19,491. In some cases, marine recoveries can even
benefit terrestrial ecosystems, as in the recovery of seabird colo-nies that enhance
biodiversity and functions of island ecosystems by supplying essential marine-derived
nitro-gen (Figure 3d11171. Only a few marine ecosystems, such as Monterey Bay, California 1701, have so far shown strong
recovery in their structure, function and services over a large area General patterns of recovery.
Ocean acidification means near term collapse is inevitable
Rogers 2/17 [Alex Rogers, Scientific Director of IPSO and Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology,
University of Oxford, 2014, “The Ocean’s Death March,” http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/17/the-oceans-death-march/]
This problem is unquestionably serious, and here’s why: The
rate of change of ocean pH (measure of acidity) is
10 times faster than 55 million years ago. That period of geologic history was directly linked to a
mass extinction event as levels of CO2 mysteriously went off the charts. Ten times larger is big,
very big, when a measurement of 0.1 in change of pH is consistent with significant change! According to
C.L.Dybas, On a Collision Course: Oceans Plankton and Climate Change, BioScience, 2006: “This acidification is occurring
at a rate [10-to-100] times faster [depending upon the area] than ever recorded.” In other
words, as far as science is concerned, the rate of change of pH in the ocean is “off the charts.”
Therefore, and as a result, nobody knows how this will play out because there is no known example in geologic history of such a
rapid change in pH. This begs the biggest question of modern times, which is: Will ocean acidification cause an extinction event this
century, within current lifetimes? The Extinction Event Already Appears to be Underway According
to the State of the
Ocean Report, d/d October 3, 2013,International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO): “This [acidification]
of the ocean is unprecedented in the Earth’s known history. We are entering an unknown
territory of marine ecosystem change… The next mass extinction may have already
begun. ” According to Jane Lubchenco, PhD, who is the former director (2009-13) of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the effects of acidification are already present in some oyster fisheries, like the
West Coast of the U.S. According to Lubchenco: “You can actually see this happening… It’s not something
a long way into the future. It is a very big problem,” Fiona Harvey, Ocean Acidification due to Carbon
Emissions is at Highest for 300M Years, The Guardian October 2, 2013. And, according to Richard Feely, PhD, (Dep. Of
Oceanography, University of Washington) and Christopher Sabine, PhD, (Senior Fellow, University of Washington, Joint Institute for
the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean): “If the
current carbon dioxide emission trends continue… the
ocean will continue to undergo acidification, to an extent and at rates that have not
occurred for tens of millions of years… nearly all marine life forms that build calcium
carbonate shells and skeletons studied by scientists thus far have shown deterioration
due to increasing carbon dioxide levels in seawater,” Dr. Richard Feely and Dr. Christopher Sabine,
Oceanographers, Carbon Dioxide and Our Ocean Legacy, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, April 2006. And, according to Alex Rogers, PhD, Scientific Director of the International Programme on
the State of the Ocean, OneWorld (UK) Video, Aug. 2011: “I think if
we continue on the current trajectory, we
are looking at a mass extinction of marine species even if only coral reef systems go
down, which it looks like they will certainly by the end of the century.” “Today’s human-induced
acidification is a unique event in the geological history of our planet due to its rapid rate
of change. An analysis of ocean acidification over the last 300 million years highlights the
unprecedented rate of change of the current acidification. The most comparable event 55
million years ago was linked to mass extinctions… At that time, though the rate of change
of ocean pH was rapid, it may have been 10 times slower than current change,” IGBP, IOC,
SCOR [2013], Ocean Acidification Summary for Policymakers – Third Symposium on the Ocean in a High- CO2 World, International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, Stockholm, Sweden, 2013. Fifty-five million years ago, during a dark period of time known as the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), huge quantities of CO2 were somehow released into the atmosphere, nobody knows
from where or how, but temperatures around the world soared by 10 degrees F, and the ocean depths became so corrosive that sea
shells simply dissolved rather than pile up on the ocean floor. “Most, if not all, of
the five global mass extinctions
in Earth’s history carry the fingerprints of the main symptoms of… global warming, ocean
acidification and anoxia or lack of oxygen. It is these three factors — the ‘deadly trio’ — which are
present in the ocean today. In fact, (the situation) is unprecedented in the Earth’s history
because of the high rate and speed of change,” Rogers, A.D., Laffoley, D. d’A. 2011. International Earth System
Expert Workshop on Ocean Stresses and Impacts, Summary Report, IPSO Oxford, 2011. Zooming in on the Future, circa 2050 –
Location: Castello Aragonese Scientists have discovered a real life Petri dish of seawater conditions similar to what will occur by the
year 2050, assuming humans continue to emit CO2 at current rates. This real life Petri dish is located in the Tyrrhenian Sea at
Castello Aragonese, which is a tiny island that rises straight up out of the sea like a tower. The island is located 17 miles west of
Naples. Tourists like to visit Aragonese Castle (est. 474 BC) on the island to see the display of medieval torture devices. But, the real
action is offshore, under the water, where Castello Aragonese holds a very special secret, which is an underwater display that gives
scientists a window 50 years into the future. Here’s the scoop: A quirk of geology is at work whereby volcanic vents on the seafloor
surrounding the island are emitting (bubbling) large quantities of CO2. In turn, this replicates the level of CO2 scientists expect the
ocean to absorb over the course of the next 50 years. “When
you get to the extremely high CO2 almost
nothing can tolerate that ,” according to Jason-Hall Spencer, PhD, professor of marine biology, School of Marine Science
and Engineering, Plymouth University (UK), who studies the seawater around Castello Aragonese (Elizabeth Kolbert, The Acid Sea,
National Geographic, April, 2011.) The adverse effects of excessive CO2 are found everywhere in the immediate surroundings of the
tiny island. For example, barnacles, which are one of the toughest of all sea life, are missing around the base of the island where
seawater measurements show the heaviest concentration of CO2. And, within the water, limpets, which wander into the area
seeking food, show severe shell dissolution. As a result, their shells are almost completely transparent. Also, the underwater sea
grass is a vivid green, which is abnormal because tiny organisms usually coat the blades of sea grass and dull the color, but no such
organisms exists. Additionally, sea urchins, which are commonplace further away from the vents, are nowhere to be seen around the
island. The only life forms found around Castello Aragonese are jellyfish, sea grass, and algae; whereas, an abundance of underwater
sea life is found in the more distant surrounding waters. Thus, the Castello Aragonese Petri dish is essentially a dead sea except for
weeds. This explains why Jane Lubchenco, former head
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
refers to ocean acidification as global warming’s “equally evil twin ,” Ibid. To that end, a slow
motion death march is consuming life in the ocean in real time, and we humans are
witnesses to this extinction event.
Economic growth solve environment – conservation projects
Everett et al 10 (Tim, Senior Policy Advisor for Defra, “Economic Growth and the Environment”,
Defra Evidence and Analysis Series, March 2010,
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/69195/pb13390economic-growth-100305.pdf)
The demand for a clean and healthy natural environment provides opportunities for
employment and wealth creation; for example, organic agriculture and industries responsible
for managing and protecting natural resources . Other industries aim to reduce the
environmental impacts of economic activity; for example, through generating renewable energy,
through waste management techniques, and through products and technologies that reduce air
and noise pollution from production processes. Yet others aim to mitigate adverse
environmental impacts and restore natural assets to their previous condition, such as water
treatment services and land remediation. These industries contribute substantially to the UK
economy. A recent study found that the Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services sector
was worth over £100 billion in the UK in 2007/08, including the supply chains of these industries24.
They provided 880,000 jobs, a figure forecast to rise to over 1.3 million by 2015.
Fishery Management is failing- Positive trends come from developed countries’
skewed databases which are only 20% of all fish catches
Cheung and Pitcher 13 (William W.L Cheung PhD in Resource Management and
Environmental Studies Assistant Professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre AND Tony J. Pitcher
founding director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia, where he is currently
a professor of fisherie “Fisheries: Hope or despair?” Marine Pollution Bulletin 2013
Bulletinhttp://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Pitcher-Cheung.pdf)//BLOV
review of the main types of fishery management sug- gests that most of the ‘silver bullet’
approaches of a single type of management system (such as ‘property rights’, ‘MPAs’ or ‘co-man- agement’) will
not work well, and only combined management ap- proaches (ecosystem and restoration-based) perform best ( Pitcher and Lam, 2010
A recent
). However, despite many calls for its implementa- tion (e.g., Hall and Mainprize, 2005 ), there has been a widespread failure among the
principal fishing countries to adopt the key fea- tures of ecosystem-based fishery management ( Pitcher et al., 2008a,b ). Nevertheless,
there are some signs that the management of some fisheries in the developed world is improving.
For exam- ple, countries with higher Code compliance scores showed improvement in status between 1995 and 2005, according to an
ecosystem health index ( Coll et al., 2012 ).
Unfortunately, countries with poor Code compliance had not
changed, or had got slightly worse . Poor governance in managing fisheries in developing coun- tries is
a hard problem to tackle: for many small-scale fisheries in developing countries it is impractical to collect any data. In such
situations, it has been suggested that basic elements of ‘primary fisheries management’ represent a practical solution ( Cochrane et al., 2011
). Is
the current status in sustainability of fisheries better than had previously been thought?
assessment data from over 350 stocks by Worm et al. (2009) suggested that
improved management had led to increased biomass and that fishery stocks were recovering.
However , the analysis was based on fish popula- tions that have conventional stock assessment
procedures held in a public database (the ‘‘Ram Myers legacy database’’: Ricard et al., 2012 ). These fish stocks, however,
comprise only 16% of the annual world fish catch (only about 8% without just one stock, the US North Pacific
pollock), and moreover, most of them are from North America and Europe ( Worm and Branch, 2012 ). As one might ex- pect for
fisheries where costly modern stock assessment is carried out, these fisheries are largely in
countries of the developed world with the top 15% of fishery management quality scores ( Mora et
Analysis of stock
al., 2009 ). They all have a relatively high UN Human Development In- dex and are at the upper end of the range of compliance with the UN
Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (see Fig. 2 : Pitcher et al., 2009 ). In these assessed fisheries, biomass lies at about 32% of
estimated unfished biomass, or about 90% of the MSY level ( Worm and Branch, 2012 ). Moreover, Froese et al. (2012) argue that these
assessed stocks are a fundamentally biased subset of all fished stocks in that they represent high
value, resilient stocks that have survived fishing for decades, or centuries of fishing in the case of some European
ecosystems. While there is indeed some evidence of small improvements to fisheries management in the
developed world ( Coll et al., 2012 ), over 80% of the world’s fish are caught elsewhere ( Pomeroy and
this does not support a message of confi- dence. In fact, a statistical analysis of the
status of the majority of world fisheries ( Costello et al., 2012 ) using a multiple regression model to predict status
Andrew, 2011 ) and so
(B/Bmsy) for unassessed fisheries, confirms that, although fisheries for which stock assessment is available are mostly in a reasonable
shape, serious depletions are the norm world-wide. This argues against Worm and Branch’s (2012) sug- gestion that unassessed fisheries
may ‘‘probably harbor higher but declining fish biomass’’. Moreover, recent analysis suggests that catch per
effort is still declining ( Watson et al., 2012 ). This evi- dence suggests that the global picture is indeed
alarming.
2NC Impact inevitable
Whaling
COLLINS 14 (Katie, writer for Wired Science, Whales are the engineers of our ocean ecosystems,
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/03/whales-ecosystem-engineers, 7/3/14)
Thanks to marine biologists around the world we now know that the
gentle giants of our oceans have a powerful and
positive impact on our underwater ecosystems. It has long been presumed that whales are so rare that their effect on
our oceans is negligible. Not so, according to new research published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, which has
taken into account several
decades of whale-related data and found that their influence can be seen in
the global carbon storage and the health of commercial fisheries. In the past fishermen have often taken taken
the view that whales, which after all have massive metabolic demands, are their competition. It turns out, however, that a prevalence
of whales actually encourages the development of more robust fisheries. It's estimated that the
dramatic decline in whale numbers, primarily due to industrial whaling, has seen their numbers
decline between 66 and 90 percent, but there are signs of recovery, which could well have a dramatically positive impact on
the health of ocean ecosystems overall. "Future changes in the structure and function of the world's oceans
can be expected with the restoration of great whale population," write the researchers in the study's abstract.
Declining fish size
Rietta 14 (commentator at Pucci Foods ocean blog citing a recent study, conducted by fisheries
scientists with the University of Aberdeen, Rising Ocean Temperatures: Smaller Fish Will Impact
Fisheries and Ecosystems Unless Humans Learn to Adapt, http://puccifoods.com/pucciseafoodnew/blog/ocean-temperatures-rise-smaller-fish-will-impact-fisheries-ecosystems-unless-humanslearn-adapt/, 3/3/14)
There may be serious negative effects on entire ecosystems that come with decreasing fish size.
Everything in the ocean food web is connected – if fish on a lower trophic level become smaller,
they will naturally yield fewer nutrients for organisms higher up on the energy chain. These
animals could be predatory fish or sharks that are already suffering from the same depleted
oxygen levels, or marine mammals that need to sustain massive amounts of energy to survive.
They will be compelled to eat more of the smaller fish – lending to a decline in population – or
switch their food source to something else. Ripple effects could be seen far and wide in many different ocean
ecosystems. Organisms have an amazing ability to adapt and evolve to survive. But much more
time is needed to keep things in balance. These fish are being forced to adapt too quickly to
changing conditions – entire ecosystems need at least thousands of years to properly evolve.
Right now human activity is forcing monumental changes over a span of decades.
Increased ocean temperatures
Rietta 14 (commentator at Pucci Foods ocean blog citing a recent study, conducted by fisheries
scientists with the University of Aberdeen, Rising Ocean Temperatures: Smaller Fish Will Impact
Fisheries and Ecosystems Unless Humans Learn to Adapt, http://puccifoods.com/pucciseafoodnew/blog/ocean-temperatures-rise-smaller-fish-will-impact-fisheries-ecosystems-unless-humanslearn-adapt/, 3/3/14)
This study took place on fish data from the North Sea, but what about other areas? Although
scientists predict that different regions will show quite a bit of variation, we have seen a global
increase in sea surface temperatures. We must wonder how other animals are likely to be
affected. If all our oceans are warming, then we must believe that they will all begin losing the
capacity to hold oxygen. Organisms rely on this oxygen – it would be akin to our atmospheric being sucked away,
so that humans were forced to survive on less oxygen. Imagine a world where it is hard for our lungs to gather
enough oxygen to fuel the movement of our bodies. Just walking down the street would become
a tremendously difficult task. Fish and invertebrates would surely lose the energy needed to find
food, shelter and mates. Coral reefs are especially sensitive to environmental conditions, with
higher temperatures causing coral bleaching and eventual death. Coral reefs are home to 25% of life in the
oceans with biodiversity levels on par with terrestrial rainforests. Coral reefs provide millions of people with food and jobs in fishing and
ecotourism. Their
disappearance would have grave implications for the future.
Caribbean Reefs will disappear in 20 years- increased pressures and lack of
grazers
Seattle Times 7/7/14 (“Study: Caribbean coral reefs will be lost within 20 years” Seattle times
7/7/14 http://seattletimes.com/html/outdoors/2024012938_caribbeanreefs
disappearingxml.html)//BLOV
Caribbean coral reefs will disappear within the next 20 years unless action is taken to protect them,
primarily due to the decline of grazers such as sea urchins and parrotfish, a new report has
warned. A comprehensive analysis by 90 experts of more than 35,000 surveys conducted at nearly 100
Caribbean locations since 1970 shows that the region’s corals have declined by more than 50
percent. But restoring key fish populations and improving protection from overfishing and pollution could help the reefs recover and
Most
make them more resilient to the impacts of climate change, according to the study from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the U.N.’s Environment Program. While
climate change and the
resulting ocean acidification and coral bleaching does pose a major threat to the region, the report
— Status and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012 — found that local pressures such as tourism, overfishing
and pollution posed the biggest problems.
And these factors have made the loss of the two main grazer species, the
parrotfish and sea urchin, the key driver of coral decline in the Caribbean. Grazers
are important fish in the marine
ecosystem as they eat the algae that can smother corals. An unidentified disease led to a mass
mortality of the sea urchin in 1983 and overfishing throughout the 20th century has brought
the parrotfish population to the brink of extinction in some regions, according to the report.
Reefs where parrotfish are not protected have suffered significant declines, including Jamaica,
the entire Florida reef tract from Miami to Key West, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. At the same time,
the report showed that some of the healthiest Caribbean coral reefs are those that are home to big populations of grazing parrotfish. These
include the U.S. Flower Garden Banks national marine sanctuary in the northern Gulf of Mexico, Bermuda and Bonaire — all of which have
restricted or banned fishing practices that harm parrotfish.
Solvency
1NC Solvency
Deep-Sea equipment cannot reach intended depths—too costly, difficult
Bowen et. al 09 (Andrew D. Bowen—Principal Engineer Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering Director of National Deep Submergence
¶
¶
Facility; Dana R. Yoerger; Chris Taylor; Robert McCabe; Jonathan Howland; Daniel Gomez-Ibanez; James C. Kinsey; Matthew Heintz; Glenn McDonald;
Donald B. Peters; Barbara Fletcher; Chris Young; James Buescher; Louis L. Whitcomb; Stephen C. Martin; Sarah E. Webster; Michael V. Jakuba; “The
Nereus Hybrid Underwater Robotic Vehicle for Global Ocean Science Operations to 11,000m Depth”; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; pg. 2;
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5422316; October 2009) JM
Existing deep submergence vehicle systems have excellent capabilities and provide critical,
routine access to the sea floor to a maximum depth range of 6,500 m — e.g. the 4,500 m Alvin human occupied
submersible [7], [19], the 4,500 m ABE AUV [35], [36], and the 4,000 m Tiburon ROV [26]. Only a few presently
operational U.S. vehicles are capable of diving to 6,500 m and conducting high resolution
mapping and sampling — e.g. the 6,500 m Jason II ROV [33]. These capabilities have led to significant scientific
discoveries over the past 30 years including identifying and sampling mid-ocean ridge volcanic processes, hydrothermal processes,
and biological ecosystems which have revolutionized the biological sciences [1]. Progress in deep sea research at ocean floor sites
between 6,500 m and 11,000 m has been hindered by a lack of suitable cost- effective vehicles that can operate at these depths.
Given the need for full access to the global abyss, and national and international imperatives regarding ocean exploration, a
variety of studies have identified the development of an 11,000 m deep submergence
vehicle as a national priority [1]–[3], [28]¶ To date, only two vehicles have ever reached the
deepest place on Earth — Challenger Deep of the Marianas Trench at 11◦22’N, 142◦25’E in the Western Pacific Ocean
near the island of Guam [13]. On January 23, 1960 the human- piloted Bathyscaph Trieste, developed by Auguste Piccard, made one
successful dive to the Challenger Deep [27]. In 1995 the remotely controlled ROV Kaiko, built and operated by the Japan Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), made the first of several successful dives to the Challenger Deep [31]. Neither
Trieste nor Kaiko is presently operational. Moreover, the
design approaches employed in these two (very
in high¶ operational costs — too costly to be routinely
supported by United States oceanographic science budgets.¶ The depth capability of
conventional tethered ROVs such as Jason II cannot be directly extended to 11,000 m because
conventional steel-reinforced cables are self-supporting in sea water only to cable
lengths up to about 7,000m. Alternative tension member materials for 11,000 m operations, e.g. Kevlar, result in largedifferent) vehicles necessarily result
diameter cables that exhibit poor hydrodynamic characteristics and that require very large cable handling systems¶ Light fiber optic
tethers offer an alternative to conventional large-diameter steel and Kevlar cables. To date, light fiber tethers have principally been
employed in military appli- cations; relatively
few light fiber tether systems have been employed for
oceanographic research. In [5], [23]–[25] the authors report the development of the self-powered remotely operated
vehicle UROV7K employing a fiber-optic tether. This vehicle is designed to operate exclusively as a tethered ROV, and does not have
on-board computational resources necessary to operate autonomously. In [8], [10] International Submarine Engineering Limited
reported the successful deployment of an autonomous underwater vehicle designed to deploy fiber optic communication cables on
the arctic sea floor.¶ Our goal is to create a practical 11,000 m system using an appropriately designed self-powered vehicle that can
(a) oper- ate as an untethered autonomous vehicle (AUV mode) and (b) operate under remote-control connected to the surface
vessel by a lightweight fiber optic tether of up to approximately 40 km in length (ROV mode).
AT: NOAA
Expert consensus indicates a litany of structural deficiencies ensure NOAA
programs fail – new investment doesn’t solve
Orcutt et al. 3
Dr. John Orcutt - Professor of geophysics and Deputy Director at Scripps Institution of
Oceanography and Interim Dean of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego,
Ph. D. in geophysics from the University of California, San Diego-Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, President-Elect of the American Geophysical Union, Chief of Naval Operations
Oceanography chair, former member of the Ocean Studies Board; Dr. Shirley Pomponi – Vice
President and Director of Research at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Ph. D. in
biological oceanography from the University of Miami, former member of the President’s Panel
on Ocean Exploration; John Moore – Walter L. Brown Professor of Law at the University of
Virginia School of Law, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Oceans Law and Policy,
former Chairman of the National Security Council Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea,
former member of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere, 14 other
oceanographic pundits
(“Exploration of the Seas: Voyage into the Unknow”, 2003,
http://explore.noaa.gov/sites/OER/Documents/national-research-council-voyage.pdf)//EO
DOMESTIC SUPPORT FOR OCEAN EXPLORATION There has been continued support for and
success from oceanographic research in the United States, and a large-scale international
exploration program could rapidly accelerate our acquisition of knowledge of the world's
oceans. The current ocean-research-funding framework does not favor such exploratory
proposals. Additional funding for exploration with-out a new framework for
management and investment is unlikely to result in establishment of a successful
exploration program. A new program, how-ever, could provide the resources and establish the
selection processes needed to develop ocean exploration theme areas and pursue new research
in biodiversity, processes, and resources within the world's oceans. The current effort of the
Office of Ocean Exploration at NOM should not be expected to fill this role. After weighing the
issues involved in oversight and funding, perhaps the most appropriate placement for an ocean
exploration program is under the auspices of the interagency NOPP, provided that the problems
with routing funds to NOPP-sponsored projects is solved. This solution has the best chance of
leading to major involvement by NOM, NSF, and other appro-priate organizations such as the
Office of Naval Research. The committee is not prepared to support an ocean exploration
program within NOM unless major shortcomings of NOAA as a lead agency can be
effectively and demonstrably overcome. A majority of the committee members felt that
the structural problems limiting the effectiveness of NOAA's current ocean exploration
program are insurmountable. A minority of the committee members felt that the problems
could be corrected. If there is no change to the status quo for NOPP or NOM, the committee
recommends that NSF be encouraged to take on an ocean exploration program. Although a
program within NSF would face the same difficulties of the existing NOAA program in
attracting other federal (and nonfederal) partners, NSF has proven success-ful at managing
international research programs as well as a highly-regarded ocean exploration program that
remained true to its founding vision.
OFF CASE
Politics link
1NC Politics
The vast majority of Americans support ocean exploration – the public
views the condition of seas as innately connected with humanity’s
wellbeing
Nichols et al. 3
Reid Nichols – President of the Marine Information Resources Corporation with four decades of
military, commercial, and research experience in oceanographic fields, M.S. in Physical
Oceanography from North Carolina State University, former oceanographer for NOAA; David
Porter – Principal Senior Staff Oceanographer for the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory's Ocean Remote Sensing Group and Senior Physical Oceanographer for MIRC etc.
(“Recent Advances and Issues in Oceanography”, June 30 2003, pgs. 197-198,
http://books.google.com/books?id=IjxpKwHgbqkC&dq)//EO
Public opinion polls indicate that Americans care strongly about the ocean and are
prepared to support ocean exploration over space ex-ploration. According to a recent
survey, eighty percent say that the condition of the ocean is a matter of personal
importance. A full 55 percent give priority to funding ocean exploration over space exploration. The survey participants, nearly three quarters (72 percent), also see the health of
the ocean as intimately connected to the future well-being of humankind. The Future
Ocean exploration gives mankind a sense of human progress and heritage. It provides the
experience and knowledge necessary to undertake stewardship of the occan and its
resources, and thus sets a course for future generations to navigate. What lies ahead is still
unknown. Whatever it is, however, will be influenced by what is found through tomorrow's
exploration—and will likely be different from today's predictions0021
DOE CP
DOE CP
Text: The Department of Energy should substantially invest in algal biofuel
research.
DOE research solves algae biofuels- they have the necessary equipment and
infrastructure
IER, 2012 (Institute for Energy Research, “Algae: America's future transportation fuel?”, IER, 03/01/2012,
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/algae-americas-future-transportation-fuel/)
DOE status and Obama’s Algae Program DOE is currently
subsidizing more than 30 algae-based biofuels
projects, representing $85 million in total spending. Through the new funding, the Department
wants to modify existing facilities at universities and national laboratories for long-term algae
research and to test new production processes that could lead to commercialization, minimizing the
water and nutrients needed to mass produce algae for commercial biofuels. The DOE awards represent
the first phase in a total $30 million investment in algal biofuels in fiscal year 2012 . The projects selected
will receive up to $14.3 million in fiscal year 2012 funds, with an additional $6.7 million available in fiscal year 2014 funding, subject to
Congressional appropriations.[viii] President Obama wants to begin construction on at least four commercial-scale refineries for biofuels
by 2013 and he touts that his new motor vehicle fuel standard regulations would help American families to save $8,000 at the pump over
time. But these are not quick fixes to lowering the price of gasoline that he believes he has no control over.