Contention 1 is Inherency – The National Ocean Policy is a failure. Budget and coordination efforts hamstring holistic strategy for exploration
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- Lack of funding prohibits ocean exploration
- NASA given more importance and funding
- NOAA Bad
- Funding/US Leadership
InherencyFundingFunding not happening and is vital.Haidvogal et. al 13 (Dale, Professor at Rutgers University in Physical oceanography, numerical ocean circulation modeling, Elizabeth Turner, Oceanographer and Senior Program Manager NOAA Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (CSCOR), Enrique N. Curchitser, Associate Professor Physical Oceanography / Modeling at Rutgers University, Eileen Hoffman, Eileen E. Hofmann Professor of Oceanography at Old Dominion University, Transdisciplinary Modeling, Environmental Forecasting, and Management, Vol. 26 No. 4, http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/26-4_haidvogel.html) jml Large-scale ocean research programs are difficult to sustain under stable budgets, and are even more so under declining budgets. A national ocean research initiative has been formulated through the Ocean Research Priorities Plan (National Science and Technology Council, 2007, 2013), which highlights themes that were also part of US GLOBEC, such as: Monitoring of living resources (at multiple trophic levels), Collection of necessary data (observational and experimental) to support robust models , Process-oriented research to resolve critical functional relationships encoded into models Development and validation of ecosystem and species interaction models at appropriate scales that incorporate feedback mechanisms among trophic levels, Improving ecosystem models to better understand complex ecosystem dynamics and forecast the effects of resource use, exploration, and development on ecosystems and individual components These ambitions have yet to be fully implemented due to financial constraints, but it is clear that approaches such as those used by US GLOBEC continue to be essential to meeting the nation’s ocean research needs. Lack of funding prohibits ocean explorationConathan 13 | Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, Mike spent five years staffing the Senate Committee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard. He holds a masters in marine affairs from the University of Rhode Island and a BA in English Literature from Georgetown University. <“Space Exploration Dollars Dwarf Ocean Spending,” 6/25/2014. The reference shelf. TG> “Star Trek” would have us believe that space is the final frontier, but with apologies to the armies of Trekkies, their oracle might be a tad off base. Though we know little about outer space, we still have plenty of frontiers to explore here on our home planet. And they’re losing the race of discovery. Hollywood giant James Cameron, director of mega-blockbusters such as “Ti- tanic” and “Avatar,” brought this message to Capitol Hill last week, along with the single-seat submersible that he used to become the third human to journey to the deepest point of the world’s oceans—the Marianas Trench. By contrast, more than 500 people have journeyed into space—including Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), who sits on the committee before which Cameron testified—and 12 people have actu- ally set foot on the surface of the moon. All it takes is a quick comparison of the budgets for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to understand why space ex- ploration is outpacing its ocean counterpart by such a wide margin. In fiscal year 2013 NASA’s annual exploration budget was roughly $3.8 billion. That same year, total funding for everything NOAA does—fishery management, weather and climate forecasting, ocean research and management, among many other programs—was about $5 billion, and NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Re- search received just $23.7 million. Something is wrong with this picture. Space travel is certainly expensive. But as Cameron proved with his dive that cost approximately $8 million, deep-sea exploration is pricey as well. And that’s not the only similarity between space and ocean travel: Both are dark, cold, and com- pletely inhospitable to human life. Yet space travel excites Americans’ imaginations in a way ocean exploration never has. To put this in terms Cameron may be familiar with, just think of how stories are told on screens both big and small: Space dominates, with “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” and “2001 A Space Od- yssey.” Then there are B-movies such as “Plan Nine From Outer Space” and every- thing ever mocked on “Mystery Science Theater 2000.” There are even parodies: “Spaceballs,” “Galaxy Quest,” and “Mars Attacks!” And let’s not forget Cameron’s own contributions: “Aliens” and “Avatar.” Part of this incongruity comes from access. No matter where we live, we can go outside on a clear night, look up into the sky, and wonder about what’s out there. We’re presented with a spectacular vista of stars, planets, meteorites, and even the occasional comet or aurora. We have all been wishing on stars since we were chil- dren. Only the lucky few can gaze out at the ocean from their doorstep, and even those who do cannot see all that lies beneath the waves. When it comes to the ocean, we have “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” “Sponge Bob Square Pants,” and Cameron’s somewhat lesser-known film “The Abyss.” And that’s about it. This imbalance in pop culture is illustrative of what plays out in real life. We rejoiced along with the NASA mission-control room when the Mars rover landed on the red planet late last year. One particularly exuberant scientist, known as “Mo- hawk Guy” for his audacious hairdo, became a minor celebrity and even fielded his share of spontaneous marriage proposals. But when Cameron bottomed out in the Challenger Deep more than 36,000 feet below the surface of the sea, it was met with resounding indifference from all but the dorkiest of ocean nerds such as my- self. As a result, the facts about ocean exploration are pretty bleak. Humans have laid eyes on less than 5 percent of the ocean, and we have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of America’s exclusive economic zone—the undersea territory reaching out 200 miles from our shores. Sure, space is sexy. But the oceans are too. To those intrigued by the quest for alien life, consider this: Scientists estimate that we still have not discovered 91 percent of the species that live in our oceans. And some of them look pretty outlandish. Go ahead and Google the deepsea hatchetfish, frill shark, or Bathynomus giganteus. In a time of shrinking budgets and increased scrutiny on the return for our in- vestments, we should be taking a long, hard look at how we are prioritizing our exploration dollars. If the goal of government spending is to spur growth in the private sector, entrepreneurs are far more likely to find inspiration down in the depths of the ocean than up in the heavens. The ocean already provides us with about half the oxygen we breathe, our single largest source of protein, a wealth of mineral re- sources, key ingredients for pharmaceuticals, and marine biotechnology. Of course space exportation does have benefits beyond the “cool factor” of put- ting people on the moon and astronaut-bards playing David Bowie covers in space. Inventions created to facilitate space travel have become ubiquitous in our lives— cell-phone cameras, scratch-resistant lenses, and water-filtration systems, just to name a few—and research conducted in outer space has led to breakthroughs here on earth in the technological and medical fields. Yet despite far-fetched plans to mine asteroids for rare metals, the only tangible goods brought back from space to date remain a few piles of moon rocks. NASA given more importance and fundingPeterson 13 (Molly, “Long Beach to host first effort to craft a national ocean exploration plan”, SCPR, July 18, http://www.scpr.org/blogs/environment/2013/07/18/14302/long-beach-to-host-first-effort-to-craft-a-nationa/) KD Deep space and the deep sea have a few things in common: they’re dark, they’re cold, and they’re fairly inhospitable to human life. But the US spends a LOT more money exploring space than it does the ocean. About one hundred of the nation’s leading ocean explorers are meeting Friday and Saturday at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach as part of a high-profile effort to change that.¶ The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration got just around $24 million in the most recent fiscal year for ocean exploration. NASA’s budget for space exploration topped out around $3.8 billion: about 150 times more money. And NOAA funding is always on shaky ground. In the last year, Congress again kicked around the idea of killing off the National Undersea Research Program.¶ The Aquarium of the Pacific is co-sponsoring this weekend’s meeting with NOAA, several foundations, and Google. The meeting’s executive chair is Marcia McNutt, a marine geophysicist who until recently ran the US Geological Survey. Government scientists, policymakers, and people from the private sector will discuss exploration priorities. At the end, they plan to produce the first national ocean exploration plan, which they will present to President Obama.¶ Even though Friday and Saturday sessions are invitation-only, NOAA’s streaming the meeting online. The Aquarium of the Pacific is making Sunday Explorer’s Day. At the tropical reef habitat, scientists will demonstrate remote operated vehicles. And several ocean explorers will be presenting their work and chatting with the public. Among them will be Sylvia Earle, who led the first team of women aquanauts during the Tektite Project. NOAA BadThe NOAA is a stagnant agency that is forced into a corner by bureaucracyJuda 14 [Lawrence, Works at the Department of Marine Affairs, Ocean Development & International Law, Taylor & Francis, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00908320390209627]-DaveD. Institutional change did occur following the issuance of the Stratton Commission Report. President Nixon established a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),39 but it was not made an independent body as suggested by the Stratton Com- mission. Rather, it was placed in the Department of Commerce. Further, not all of the governmental units that the Stratton Commission would have transferred into that agency were so moved.40 Although the creation of NOAA represented a significant step toward ocean policy centralization, it did not eliminate the reality that a number of civilian federal government departments and agencies still maintained important jurisdictional and programmatic responsibilities relating to ocean/coastal matters. Some saw the establishment of NOAA only as the start of a process of centraliza- tion of ocean authority and policy.42 Indeed, several bills were introduced in Congress calling for the establishment of a Department of the Oceans, a Department of the Envi- ronment and Oceans, or an independent ocean agency,43 but the energy crisis caused by the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s served to shift reorganization attention toward energy and natural resource concerns. In this context ocean-related programs and resources were not seen as providing an integrating theme but rather as elements of what might be encompassed in the creation of a Department of Energy and Natural Resources.44 As noted by Robert White, a former Administrator of NOAA, “Governments are problem- oriented, not place oriented,”45 so in this perspective it is not surprising that oceans were not seen as a focal point around which to organize government.¶ But the failure to achieve more substantial organizational change also reflected a continuing problem associated with efforts for governmental reorganization: bureaucratic bodies will mobilize to protect existing agency jurisdiction (turf) and prerogatives.46 This characteristic is seen as well in the standing committees of Congress, whose members are vigilant and wary of change that may weaken committee importance and influence. Reorganization also raises anxieties among many nongovernmental stakeholders. All of these actors are well aware that reorganization has implications for their influence and the substantive nature of ocean and coastal policy. Accordingly, suggestions for institu- tional reorganization will be carefully and skeptically scrutinized.¶ In terms of policy recommendations, the findings of the Stratton Commission with respect to the coastal zone were heeded by Congress and reflected in the passage of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA)47 in 1972. The CZMA marks an important de- parture from past practice in that it represents a spatial and not a sectoral approach to the management of coastal areas, one in which uses are not to be considered in isolation but in relation to other uses and with consideration of their impacts on the broader environment. Important incentives in the form of federal funding48 and federal consistency49 are provided to encourage states to adopt comprehensive coastal zone management.. Funding/US LeadershipAmerican funding and global leadership on oceans is dwindling.McClain, 12 (Craig, Assistant Director of Science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and editor @ Deep Sea News, “We Need an Ocean NASA Now Pt. 1,” 10/16/12, http://deepseanews.com/2012/10/we-need-an-ocean-nasa-now-pt-1/) Our nation faces a pivotal moment in exploration of the oceans. The most remote regions of the deep oceans should be more accessible now than ever due to engineering and technological advances. What limits our exploration of the oceans is not imagination or technology but funding. We as a society started to make a choice: to deprioritize ocean exploration and science. In general, science in the U.S. is poorly funded; while the total number of dollars spent here is large, we only rank 6th in world in the proportion of gross domestic product invested into research. The outlook for ocean science is even bleaker. In many cases, funding of marine science and exploration, especially for the deep sea, are at historical lows. In others, funding remains stagnant, despite rising costs of equipment and personnel. The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, a committee comprised of leading ocean scientists, policy makers, and former U.S. secretaries and congressmen, gave the grade of D- to funding of ocean science in the U.S. Recently the Obama Administration proposed to cut the National Undersea Research Program (NURP) within NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a move supported by the Senate. In NOAA’s own words, “NOAA determined that NURP was a lower-priority function within its portfolio of research activities.” Yet, NURP is one of the main suppliers of funding and equipment for ocean exploration, including both submersibles at the Hawaiian Underwater Research Laboratory and the underwater habitat Aquarius. This cut has come despite an overall request for a 3.1% increase in funding for NOAA. Cutting NURP saves a meager $4,000,000 or 1/10 of NOAA’s budget and 1,675 times less than we spend on the Afghan war in just one month. One of the main reasons NOAA argues for cutting funding of NURP is “that other avenues of Federal funding for such activities might be pursued.” However, “other avenues” are fading as well. Some funding for ocean exploration is still available through NOAA’s Ocean Exploration Program. However, the Office of Ocean Exploration, the division that contains NURP, took the second biggest cut of all programs (-16.5%) and is down 33% since 2009. Likewise, U.S. Naval funding for basic research has also diminished. The other main source of funding for deep-sea science in the U.S. is the National Science Foundation which primarily supports biological research through the Biological Oceanography Program. Funding for science within this program remains stagnant, funding larger but fewer grants. This trend most likely reflects the ever increasing costs of personnel, equipment, and consumables which only larger projects can support. Indeed, compared to rising fuel costs, a necessity for oceanographic vessels, NSF funds do not stretch as far as even a decade ago. Shrinking funds and high fuel costs have also taken their toll on The University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) which operates the U.S. public research fleet. Over the last decade, only 80% of available ship days were supported through funding. Over the last two years the gap has increasingly widened, and over the last ten years operations costs increased steadily at 5% annually. With an estimated shortfall of $12 million, the only solution is to reduce the U.S. research fleet size. Currently this is expected to be a total of 6 vessels that are near retirement, but there is no plan of replacing these lost ships. The situation in the U.S. contrasts greatly with other countries. The budget for the Japanese Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) continues to increase, although much less so in recent years. The 2007 operating budget for the smaller JAMSTEC was $527 million, over $100 million dollars more than the 2013 proposed NOAA budget. Likewise, China is increasing funding to ocean science over the next five years and has recently succeeded in building a new deep-sea research and exploration submersible, the Jiaolong. The only deep submersible still operating in the US is the DSV Alvin, originally built in 1968. 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