Adv 1 – Leadership
Download 0.59 Mb.
|
***Ocean Leadership***Funding down nowUS ocean exploration investment down now Helvarg 14, David, David Helvarg is executive director of Blue Frontier, a marine conservation and policy group. His latest book is "The Golden Shore: California's Love Affair With the Sea." “It's no surprise we can't find Flight 370,” April 1st, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0401-helvarg-flight-370-ocean-exploration-20140401-story.html Even accounting for more than 70 years of classified military hydrographic surveys, we've still mapped less than 10% of the ocean with the resolution we've used to map all of the moon, Mars or even several moons of Jupiter. Obviously, our ability to search for a missing aircraft at sea has come a long way since Amelia Earhart disappeared while trying to cross the Pacific in 1937. But the patched-together satellite data and electronic-signals processing that has so far pointed the Flight 370 search to an area 1,800 miles from Perth, Australia, is no more than a crisis-mode, jury-rigged, extraordinary effort. Consider this: If you're a drug smuggler and you enter U.S. coastal waters in a speedboat at night, and then go dead in the water during the day, with a blue tarp thrown over your vessel, odds are that you'll successfully deliver your contraband. Our investment in ocean exploration, monitoring and law enforcement efforts is at a 20-year low in the United States and not much better elsewhere. Our chances of quickly finding the missing Malaysian flight would have been improved if we had invested more money and effort on our planet's last great commons, with observational tools such as in-situ labs and wired benthic observatories, remote and autonomous underwater vehicles and gliders, forward-looking infrared cameras and multi-beam shipboard, airborne (and space-deployed) scanning systems, and other smart but woefully underfunded sea technologies. The fact remains that while hundreds of people have gone into space, only three humans have ventured to the lowest point on our planet seven miles down in the Mariana Trench, and the latest of these — filmmaker explorer engineer James Cameron — had to self-fund his 2012 mission. Meanwhile, when it comes to exploring the cosmos, NASA — even in its diminished state — outspends NOAA's ocean exploration program roughly 1,000 to 1. Yet when we get to Mars, the first thing we seek as proof of life is water. Meanwhile, we have a whole water planet that remains a challenge we've once again discovered to be far greater than we thought. Whatever the final resolution of the Flight 370 tragedy, that challenge is bound to become greater as our food and coastal security, marine transportation systems, even our basic ecosystem processes such as the oxygen generated by ocean plankton, are increasingly stressed through overfishing, pollution, loss of coastal habitat and ocean impacts from climate change. Investing in the exploration and understanding of our planet's largest habitat should be a given. Perhaps that will be a lesson learned from our latest human disaster. Unfortunately, while the sea is still vast, our ability to act wisely in our own interests is often limited. Subs are decommissioned Dokoupil 13, Tony, former senior reporter for Newsweek, senior writer for NBC News, “The Last Dive? Funding for Human Expeditions in the Ocean May Have Run Aground,” 1/14, http://www.newsweek.com/last-dive-funding-human-expeditions-ocean-may-have-run-aground-63201 Last spring James Cameron became a modern newsreel hero, diving the Mariana Trench, the Earth’s deepest point, and seeming to signal a new golden age of discovery. Virgin Oceanic’s Sir Richard Branson and Sylvia Earle herself, with money from Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, were each developing their own deep-diving machines. And this (quite collegial) “race to the bottom” was heralded as the ocean version of NASA’s hand-off to private rocket-makers. On with the era of civil inquiry! On with individual enterprise! Or as Cameron tweeted from the ocean floor, in a message Twitter declared one of 2012’s best moments of “just plain awesomeness”: “Hitting bottom never felt so good.” But a year later, something far from a golden age has emerged. When the public looked away, piloted exploration stopped. Schmidt stopped funding Earle. Branson’s effort stalled indefinitely. Even Cameron ran out of time and money, completing just eight “first phase” dives around Australia and Papua New Guinea. Today he says his history-making machine is in his engineering shop in Santa Barbara, Calif., “ready to dive” and available to the science community, but stowed like a moldy wet suit. The hoped-for second phase of his work has no committed funding. At the same time, government support for ocean exploration has sunk to unprecedented lows. The Pisces subs—once part of an arsenal of public ships, submarines, and laboratories that gave American scientists unmatched access to the deep—were defunded the same month Cameron touched bottom. As of today, none of those subs is operational, the last extended-stay underwater laboratory was shuttered, and at least 40 percent of the academic fleet is scheduled for retirement in the next decade. It’s a record dry spell, the result of budget cuts but also a shift in philosophy, a definitive break in the decades-old debate over whether it’s even necessary to send people into extreme spaces, when machines are cheaper, safer, and harder working. “The body is a pain,” says Robert Ballard, the marine geologist who discovered the Titanic, striking a common note about the problems with manned travel. “It has to go to the bathroom. It has to be comfortable. But the spirit is indestructible. It can move at the speed of light.” For two decades, he’s been arguing the virtues of “telepresence” technology: remotely controlled subs and rovers, pumping video to an unlimited number of researchers worldwide. This year he seems to have finally closed the conversation. While the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) pulled money from manned exploration, Ballard’s telepresence efforts comprise “the only federal program dedicated to systematic exploration of the planet’s largely unknown ocean,” according to NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. “It’s a paradigm shift,” says Ballard, at the University of Rhode Island, a move into “the next great era of exploration.” He promises to provide digital access of more of the Earth than was visited by all previous generations combined—“and still be home in time for cocktails.” It’s a perspective that mystifies Earle, Cameron, and many others trying to find the funds to maintain piloted exploration of the sea. “I love this,” she says, on deck after our dive. “It’s obscene that we would let this go. What are we thinking?” Funding down now Terdiman 10, Daniel, senior writer at CNET News, “Oceans' salvation may lie in exploration,” April 15th, Oceans' salvation may lie in exploration Indeed, the fact that humans haven't returned to the bottom of the Mariana Trench highlights a disturbing fact: while we have spent billions putting men on the moon and building space stations, we have, by comparison at least, neglected the most significant environments on Earth, our oceans. And that has, to some experts, forced our hand. Either we turn things around and make the future of ocean exploration a very high priority, they say, or we face some sobering realities. "To paraphrase [author] Tom Wolfe, we had the right stuff, but [went in] the wrong direction," Walsh said. "In the oceanographic community globally, not just in the United States, we have really failed to make the necessary investments to learn about the world's oceans, which cover 70 percent of our planet." 'Far behind the curve' If there's anyone who has gravitas in the field of ocean exploration, it's National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence Sylvia Earle. A longtime ocean explorer, author, lecturer, and former chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earle was awarded the 2009 TED Prize for her work and created Mission Blue, which aims to "heal and protect the Earth's oceans through the creation and management of essential marine protected areas." "We're far behind the curve from where we need to be," Earle told CNET. "People look at the surface, and they think that's the ocean, and because they can't see what's going on below, they think everything's just fine. But those of us with decades of exploration [experience know that] the ocean is in trouble, and therefore so are we." That's because, she said, it's the world's oceans that drive climate and weather and which generate most of our oxygen. Indeed, she said, fully one-fifth of the planet's oxygen comes from a single marine-based, blue-green bacterium: the prochlorococcus. Yet, before our eyes, she said, the marine ecosystems are dying out or struggling from a wide variety of factors including over-fishing, pollution, changes in chemistry, and more. So why have we, as a people, spent so little energy exploring the seas, even though 50 years ago, it was considered a great national triumph to have conquered the Mariana Trench? Earle recalled a lunch she once had with Clare Boothe Luce, the famous playwright and former U.S. ambassador to Italy and congresswoman. "[Boothe] was musing about the disparity [between space and ocean exploration] and she looked up at the puffy clouds, and she said, 'You know, heaven is up there. And you know what's down there.'" Deep-sea technology Today, there are not nearly enough ships, sonars, or submarines of any kind to do ocean exploration justice, said Stephen Hammond, the chief scientist for NOAA's office of ocean exploration and research. But at least some things are moving in the right direction, he added. The urgent goal, Hammond said, is to make a dent in the 90 percent of the world's oceans that humans know nothing about. And that's where NOAA is putting its money where its mouth is: by taking a former Department of Defense acoustic surveillance vessel that it acquired in 2005 and retrofitting it as a world-class "global range ship of discovery." Christened the Okeanos Explorer--okeanos is Greek for ocean--the ship, which is undergoing field trials in Hawaii right now and should embark on its first major expedition in June, is a testament to scientists applying technology to solve some significant problems. Among its innovations, the Okeanos Explorer is outfitted with what is called a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), essentially an unmanned submersible, that can descend to 6,000 meters below the surface. Like many of its cousins, it is tethered to its mothership with fiber-optic cable that can transmit data from a host of sensors and cameras. But what makes the Okeanos unique is that it features telepresence technology that will allow it to beam any kind of data gathered from the ROV, be it high-definition video or high-resolution photographs, to anywhere in the world via a super-high-speed satellite Internet connection in real-time. And that means, Hammonds explained, that scientists in command centers anywhere in the world can participate in the exploration as it's happening, a major leap forward given the economics of putting people on board ships that might be anywhere on Earth at any time. The National Science Foundation, too, is investing in ROVs and seeing them as a way to expand the reach of its research. For some time, it has operated an ROV known as Jason, which has a 6,000-meter depth range. But over the last year, the NSF has been putting much of its ocean exploration energy into a new ROV developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute known as Nereus, which, according to Brian Midson, a technology operations specialist in the NSF's submersible support program, is today the world's only vehicle proven to be able to reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench. What sets Nereus apart is a state-of-the-art, Navy-developed fiber-optic tether system originally designed for torpedoes, Midson said. That system allows Nereus to move laterally away from its mothership, meaning that it is more nimble--and so can explore much more--than its predecessors. In addition, Nereus is an example of a submersible that has pressure housings made from high-strength ceramics rather than titanium, which means it is smaller and lighter and requires a smaller ship from which to operate than have older models. Now, while Nereus has already taken two operational missions, it is awaiting the kind of scientific proposals that justify its use. Batteries a challenge As with cars, one of the biggest challenges facing submersibles is battery power. According to Bob Houtman, the head of NSF's integrative programs section, traditional submersible batteries have used lead acid and have therefore been large and heavy and inefficient. Today, however, researchers are hopeful that they will soon be able to turn to the kind of lithium ion batteries found in many electronic devices. There are no clear paths to that future, but it's clearly a priority, particularly because the batteries are lighter and more efficient. However, lithium ion batteries currently require a protective housing that adds weight and offsets much of the weight loss. Another challenge is finding a way to build manned deep-sea submersible housings out of ceramics. That may be a long way off, but Houtman said the NSF has recently funded an entirely new type of titanium submersible housing, one which he suggested could improve performance and efficiency. Cost, too, is a big barrier between researchers and the exploration they'd like. Traditionally, submersibles have been seven-figure expenditures. But on Thursday, one of the leaders in the personal submersible field, Hawkes Ocean Technologies , is announcing a spinoff company, called Hawkes Remotes, which is setting out to begin producing ROVs as well as autonomous unmanned vehicles (AUVs) that will cost at least 50 percent less than traditional models. "Our view...is that the traditional architecture for AUVs and ROVshas been relatively unchanged" for years, said Jonathan Epstein, the CEO of Hawkes Remotes, "and that by deploying the principles of flight underwater and [founder Graham Hawkes'] control systems and batteries and material science, we will be able to reduce the cost of ocean access by 50 percent right away, and possibly by an order of magnitude within two-to-three years." The lowest-priced models will cost less than $100,000, and the top end will start around $500,000. This will make it much easier, Epstein said, for research institutions to purchase submersibles and then to do deep-sea exploration. The company's vessels will combine very deep-sea range with the latest in electronics, allowing customers to send back HD video, high-resolution imagery, and much more from thousands of meters below the surface and at much lower cost than today. A closing window While the field has been neglected for some time, there is a blossoming of interest in ocean exploration today. Disney Nature will release its feature film, "Oceans" on Earth Day, April 22. One of the first efforts of the crowdsourced social change organization Armchair Revolutionary is a video game called Make Waves, which launched on April 5. It is designed to provide users with real-life social activism tools while they manage part of the ocean in a virtual environment modeled on the real-world. Still, it may be more important than ever to dive in quickly, as it were, to ocean exploration for science and research, said Hawkes. That's because, he said, with natural resources on the surface of the planet dwindling quickly, it is only a matter of time before industrial interests take to the seas to search for energy and mineral deposits. "As soon as we're short of cobalt [or other resources], the commercial pressure to start to exploit the oceans becomes real and that's all going to happen very quickly," Hawkes said. "That's an engine and impetus that's just going to dwarf science [and research] and it's just going to run right over it. My feeling is, we're running out of time to get a few solid decades of science and understanding under our belts before we get to exploitation." Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2014 2014 -> For want of a nail 2014 -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 2014 -> Ihbb asian Championships 2014 middle school bowl Round 4 First Quarter 2014 -> Ihbb european Championships 2014 Bowl Round 4 First Quarter 2014 -> International History Bee and Bowl 2013-14 Asian Division Question Set Bowl Round Six 2014 -> United states patent and trademark office 2014 -> Coffs harbour eisteddfod vocal syllabus 2014 -> Listen News Programs Schedule pledge now 2014 -> Slow club announce third album complete surrender Download 0.59 Mb. Share with your friends:
|