Counterplans General Stuff

Science Leadership

SQ Solves Science

Climate change research in the Antarctic happening now

Stars and Stripes 12 (Seth Robson, “Antarctic research could change lives around the world”, 2/5/12, http://www.stripes.com/news/antarctic-research-could-change-lives-around-the-world-1.167784)

MCMURDO STATION, Antarctica — Climate change research that the U.S. military is supporting in Antarctica will likely impact the lives of billions and might even affect servicemembers’ careers. About 125 U.S. military personnel are on the ice this summer providing logistical support to scientists investigating subjects as diverse as astronomy, physics, biology, geology, oceanography and glaciology. In terms of global impact, few fields of research are as important as efforts to understand climate change and what’s learned about the phenomenon in Antarctica will help policy makers determine U.S. energy and foreign policy for decades. If pundits are right, and conflicts arise over resources made scarce by a warming earth, the research could have a bearing on future deployments. National Science Foundation representative in Antarctica George Blaisdell said: “The vast majority of research that goes on down here is answering components of the questions: Is climate change happening? How is it happening and on what kind of timetable?” Antarctica has a central role to play in the climate of the planet, said Chuck Kennicutt, president of the multi-national Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. “It is a very exciting time for research in the polar regions,” he said. “It is things people read about in newspapers every day.” Ninety percent of the world’s fresh water is bound up in Antarctic ice sheets, Kennicutt said. “The polar ice is the planet’s thermostat,” he said. “There is a lot of interest in trying to understand if the ice sheets are stable and whether they are increasing or decreasing in mass and how that will play out over the next century.” One of the biggest research programs going on in Antarctica is a study of the Pine Island Glacier, which drains a major part of West Antarctica and is moving at 10 feet a day. Glaciers in other part of the world move a few inches per year, Blaisdell said. Members of the 109th Airlift Wing have been flying long missions to the isolated glacier in support of the research, which has been slowed by poor weather this season, he said. Scientists are drilling miles beneath the Antarctic ice sheets to obtain samples of ancient ice that they can examine to find out about past climate change, according to Jeff Severinghaus, 52, a professor from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, who has been helping collect ice core samples in West Antarctica this season. “The ice down there is 62,000 years old,” he said. “A lot of snow falls each year there so the yearly layers at that depth are 2 cm thick and we can see climate events that happen each year. What we are hoping to learn from this ice core is how the natural system will respond in coming centuries to human caused global warming.”

SQ solves – we just charter foreign icebreakers to get to research bases

O’Rourke 6/14

Specialist in Naval Affairs, Congressional Research Service, Quote from July 2010 Coast Guard High Latitude Study,“Coast Guard Polar Icebreaker Modernization: Background and Issues for Congress,” http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc85474/

Although Coast Guard polar icebreakers in the past have performed the annual McMurdo break-in mission, the NSF in recent years has chartered Russian and Swedish contractor-operated icebreakers to perform the mission (with a Coast Guard polar icebreaker standing ready to assist if needed). The NSF has also noted that Healy, though very capable in supporting Arctic research, operates at sea for about 200 days a year, as opposed to about 300 days a year for foreign contractor-operated polar icebreakers.

Can’t Solve

Alt cause - Recent budgets terminally destroyed science leadership

Orbach, 11 – Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin and served as Under Secretary for Science in the United States DOE [Raymond L. Orbach, Director, Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin, “Research Vital to Economic Growth”, http://www.energy.utexas.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100:research-vital-to-economic-growth&catid=32:editorials&Itemid=47, SM]

It was with a mixture of astonishment and dismay that I watched as the U.S. House of Representatives approved H.R. 1, a bill to fund the federal government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year. Left intact, the massive cuts in research contained in the bill passed on 19 February would effectively end America's legendary status as the leader of the worldwide scientific community, putting the United States at a distinct disadvantage when competing with other nations in the global marketplace. Other countries, such as China and India, are increasing their funding of scientific research because they understand its critical role in spurring technological advances and other innovations. If the United States is to compete in the global economy, it too must continue to invest in research programs. As the Under Secretary for Science at the Department of Energy (DOE) in the administration of George W. Bush, I can personally attest that funding for scientific research is not a partisan issue—or at least it shouldn't be. The cuts proposed in H.R. 1 would reverse a bipartisan commitment to double the science research budgets of the National Science Foundation, the DOE Office of Science, and the National Institute for Science and Technology over 10 years. These are national goals supported by both Presidents Bush and Obama, and they were affirmed as recently as last December in the America COMPETES Act. The spending cuts included in the bill would have a devastating effect on an array of critical scientific research. For example, H.R. 1 removes $900 million from the budget for the Office of Science, the basic research arm of the DOE—a reduction of some 20%. The bill specifically targets the Office of Biology and Environmental Research, slicing its budget by 50%; reductions that would all but eliminate funding for the office's three Biological Research Centers, the hope for developing transportation fuels derived from plant cellulose. The hugely successful Energy Frontier Research Centers, which support activities based at 28 universities and 16 national laboratories, would be cut in midstream. The university centers support 1300 students working on the conversion of sunlight and heat into electricity, improved efficiency of photosynthesis in plants for the production of fuels, and enhanced combustion efficiency to increase mileage for automobiles. The work now at risk at the national laboratories includes projects to improve solid-state lighting and the conversion of coal into chemicals and fuels. This research is vitally important if the United States is to be a leader in transforming how humans get and use energy globally, in a way that maintains societal and economic viability. To make matters worse, the bill would also destabilize the large-scale scientific facilities operated by the DOE's Office of Science. These research projects include the country's work with powerful light sources (which other countries are copying en masse), so vitally important to the U.S. biological, medical, and materials communities. Also included are the nation's remaining accelerators, responsible for advances in the high-energy and nuclear science communities; its spallation neutron source and nanotechnology centers, critically important to both university and industrial communities; and the quest for environmentally benign unlimited energy through investment in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The budget deficit is serious. But escaping from its clutches requires economic growth as well as budget reductions. Well over half of U.S. economic growth in the past century can be traced to investments in science and technology. To compete in the global economy, the United States must remain a leader in science and technology. For that to happen, the Senate must restore funding for science in the fiscal year 2011 budget. Failure to do so would relegate the United States to second-class status in the scientific community and threaten economic growth and prosperity for future generations of Americans.

Oil Spills

SQ Solves Oil Spills

Traumatic oil spills aren’t inevitable. U.S. oil drilling in the arctic is heavily regulated and companies will not be able to drill until the Coast Guard is confident a spill could be effectively cleaned up.

National Geographic 12 (Joe Eaton, “Shell Scales Back 2012 Arctic Drilling Goals”, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/shell-2012-arctic-drilling-goals/, 7/27/12)

Faced with iced-in Arctic waters and failure to secure U.S. Coast Guard approval of its oil-spill barge, Royal Dutch Shell* is ratcheting down its plan to drill as many as five exploratory wells this summer in the seas north of Alaska. The company planned to sink the wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas during a brief window between July and October, when the waters were expected to be clear of severe ice. But Pete Slaiby, Shell’s vice president for Alaska operations, said it’s unlikely the company will be able to meet that goal due to regulatory challenges and stubborn ice. “We are still hopeful that we will get some wells drilled,” Slaiby said. “Considering what we’ve been through . . . I think doing any kind of drilling will be a success.” With global oil demand expected to rise in the long term, and conventional production in decline, international and national fuel companies have turned increasingly to more challenging exploration and production. The Arctic has become a prized frontier, holding 13 percent of the world’s untapped oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Russia and Norway also have been forging into Arctic seas for oil, but no development has been more closely watched than Shell’s plan for drilling off Alaska’s coast. Yet Shell’s diminished Arctic expectations show that even before rigs enter this unchartered territory in search for oil, the challenges for drilling are formidable.

The Coast Guard has the capabilities to oversee Shell drilling

Businessweek 12 (Carol Wolf and Kasia Klimasinska, “As the Arctic Opens for Oil, the Coast Guard Scrambles”, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-26/as-the-arctic-opens-for-oil-the-coast-guard-scrambles, 7/26/12)

To oversee the Shell drilling, the Coast Guard plans to send two helicopters and two cutters to the Arctic, including one of its three flagship National Security Cutters, which can navigate the high seas, serve as a sophisticated communications center, and operate its own helicopter pad. The Coast Guard opened a temporary base in Barrow, Alaska, on July 16. It will practice oil spill responses and other maneuvers to test equipment and personnel readiness, says Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, deputy commandant for operations. “Our goal is to have a presence up there that can adequately address the activity for this summer and then to think about what it means for the future,” says Neffenger. Shell is deploying 33 vessels and 600 workers for its Arctic venture, says Steve Phelps, Shell’s manager of exploration for Alaska. “We know the region is very remote and very dangerous,” Phelps says. “We realize if we need it, we have to bring it.”

Spills Turn

Turn: using icebreakers to increase trade results in more spills

Mahony 11 (Honor, EU Observer, “Arctic shipping routes unlikely to be ‘Suez of the north”)

Environment And then there is the environmental impact of increased shipping. More traffic means there is a greater risk of oil spill. The ships will introduce alien species through their hull water and are likely to interrupt the migratory patterns of marine mammals. Carbon emissions could accelerate ice melting even further, and this in a region where the average temperature has risen almost twice as fast as the rest of the world's. Other ship emissions , such as SOx and NOx, may also have unforeseen consequences on the Arctic environment. Norwegian explorer Borge Ousland says it is vital not to forget that changes in the Polar regions could have global ef-fects. "It is easy to look at the Polar regions as an isolated area but any change in temperature has an effect on the rest of the world," he said recently. "I am very worried about what I have seen in the last 20 years. When I went up to the North Pole for the first time in 1990, the ice was three to four metres thick. In 2007 we measured the ice for the Norwegian Polar Institute and the coverage of ice was now 1.7 metres thick."

Alt causes

Alt causes to oil spills - Pollution

Ocean Link ‘5 "Marine Pollution: Causes and Effects 2-18, http://oceanlink.island.net/oceanmatters/marine%20 pollution.html

Pollution of the world's oceans is quickly becoming a major problem on Earth. We know very little about the effect that pollution has on the oceans but we continue to dispose of chemicals, sewage and garbage into it. Most people likely do not even know what types of pollutants reach the oceans. There may be billions of people who do not believe ocean pollution is a problem. In the following pages, I will look at the various ocean pollutants and the potential impacts they have on the ocean animals. Toxic Ocean Pollutants Toxic pollutants in the ocean ecosystem have massive impacts on the plants and animals. Heavy metal poisoning (such as lead and mercury) from industrial fallout collect in the tissues of top predators such as whales and sharks. Sometimes this type of poisoning can cause birth defects and nervous system damage. Dioxins from the pulp and paper bleaching process can cause genetic chromosomal problems in marine animals and may even cause cancer in humans. PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) typically cause reproduction problems in most marine organisms. PCB's usually come from older electrical equipment. Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH's) are another source of marine toxic pollution and typically come from oil pollution and burning wood and coal. These PAH's are responsible for causing genetic chromosomal aberrations in many marine animals. Lastly, low level radiation poisoning is also possible in the ocean environment. Scientists know very little about how radiation affects marine organisms but it cannot be a good thing. Some marine species such as a population of Beluga whales living in the Saint Lawrence River area in Eastern Canada are in serious trouble because of marine toxic pollution. These Beluga whales are the victims of ocean pollution ranging from PCB's to heavy metals as well as other pollutants. However toxic pollution is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of total ocean pollution. The folliwing images indicate various types of toxic pollutants.