Contention one is overfishing Current federal policy impedes offshore aquaculture—ensures the us is dependent on unsustainable sources
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Fish=Carbon SinksWe need fish to solve warmingClimate News Network 2014 (Stop fishing the high seas, say scientists, for climate and ecology; Jun 21; www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2431895/stop_fishing_the_high_seas_say_scientists_for_climate_and_ecology.html; kdf) Fish from the high seas are too valuable to be eaten, as they lessen climate change through the carbon they carry down to the ocean depths. The carbon benefits are worth $150 billion every year - almost ten times the value of high seas fish landings. Marine biologists have delivered the most radical proposal yet to protect biodiversity and sequester carbon: stop all fishing, they say, on the high seas. The high seas are the stretches of ocean that nobody owns and nobody claims: they are beyond the 200-mile economic zones patrolled and sometimes disputed by national governments. They are also what climate scientists call a carbon sink, a natural source of carbon removal. Deep oceans deliver $148 bn carbon benefit every year Life in the deep seas absorbs 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and buries half a billion tonnes of carbon on the sea bed every year, according to Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia in Canada and Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford in the UK. The two researchers put the value to humanity of life in the high seas - in terms of its ability to sequester carbon - at $148 billion a year. Only a hundredth of the fish landed in all the ports in all the world is found on the high seas alone. And around 10 million tonnes of fish are caught by high seas fishing fleets each year, and sold for $16bn. "Countries around the world are struggling to find cost-effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions. We've found that the high seas are a natural system that is doing a good job of it for free", said Professor Sumaila. "Keeping fish in the high seas gives us more value than catching them. If we lose the life on the high seas, we'll have to find another way to reduce emissions at a much higher cost." Staying in the depths But it isn't just the high seas that sequester carbon. In a second study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, British and Irish researchers argue that deep sea fish remove and stow away more than a million tonnes of carbon dioxide just from waters around the British coasts and the Irish Sea. If this volume were valued as 'carbon credits' it would add up to £10 mn a year ($16.8 mn). The reasoning goes like this. Deep water fishes don't rise to the surface, they depend on food that filters down to them from above. At mid water level, there is a huge and diverse ecosystem involving many species that rise to the surface to feed during the night and then sink back down again, and some of this reaches the depths. 'Radical steps must be taken' Clive Trueman of the University of Southampton and colleagues measured ratios of isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the tissues of fish caught at depths between 500 and 1,800 metres to calculate the original sources of food. They found that more than half of these fish got their energy - their food supply - from fishes that went to the surface. But deep water fish, when they die, stay at depth. Their carbon doesn't get back into the atmospheric system. Research like this is done to solve the puzzles of the planetary ecosystem, but also to explore the options open to politicians who will one day have to confront the mounting costs of climate change. The declaration of the high seas as 'off limits' to all fishing sounds utopian, but fisheries scientists have repeatedly argued that present fishing regimes are not sustainable, and that radical steps must be taken. Fish sanctuaries Callum Roberts, of the University of York, UK, has been making the case for 'marine parks', or undisturbed ocean and shallow water wildernesses, for more than a decade. Like pristine tropical rainforests, or protected wetlands and prairies, these would be nurseries and safe zones for rare or otherwise threatened species of plants and animals. But they would also serve as valuable carbon sinks. Either way, humans would benefit because the marine parks would slow global warming and limit climate change. "The more abundant life is, and the more the seabeds are rich, complex and dominated by filter feeders that extract organic matter from the water, and creatures that bury matter in the mud, the more effective the seas will be as a carbon sink", said Professor Roberts. "Overfishing has diminished that benefit wherever it has taken place just at the time when we need it most. I think the carbon sequestration argument is a strong one. The deep sea is probably the biggest carbon sink on the planet by virtue of its enormous size. "It is incredibly important as a sink, because once carbon is trapped there, it is much harder for it to get re-released into the atmosphere than is the case for carbon sinks on land, like forests or peat bogs." Planetary benefits - or a future of declining catches? Protection of fish on the high seas would also be good for fish stocks in the exclusive economic zones nearer the shores, where the global catch is more carefully managed, and where some areas are already protected. This would benefit all nations where people depend on fishing or fish farming. At the moment, only a small number of nations maintain high seas fleets. The Global Ocean Commission, which commissioned the high seas study, claims that such a decision would make economic, social and ecological sense: the oceans supply "vital services" to humanity. They provide half of the planet's oxygen, deliver nourishment for billions of people, and regulate the climate. To protect the high seas could help offshore fish stocks, but demand for fish is likely to grow in step with population increases, and fish produce at least one sixth of the animal protein that humans consume. The supply of 'wild' fish caught by net or line peaked nearly two decades ago. The World Resources Institute believes that production of farmed fish and shellfish will have to increase by 133% by 2050. AT: SO2 ScrewMost recent and comparative study found that pumping SO2 in the atmosphere won’t solve warming, and only make the impacts of warming worsePhys.org 2014 (Climate engineering offers little hope of mitigation; Jul 4; phys.org/news/2014-07-climate-mitigation.html; kdf) Injecting particles into the stratosphere to shade and cool the Earth will never stop climate change. This is the shocking claim made in the July issue of Nature Climate Change by an international group of prominent scientists, including Dutchmen Marten Scheffer from Wageningen University and Aart de Zeeuw from Tilburg University. An international agreement was drawn up in 1992 to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would make it possible to limit climate change. Despite this, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane have continued to increase and measures to limit emissions have had little effect. The CO2 concentration has now passed the limit of 400 ppm (May 2014: 401.88). Solar radiation management In theory, the amount of solar radiation that falls on the Earth can be limited quite simply by dispersing fine sulphate particles (aerosols) high in the atmosphere (the stratosphere). The group of scientists investigated whether applying solar radiation management would have the desired effect and, if so, whether such an international-level intervention was politically achievable. They showed that although geo-engineering can reduce the average temperature of the Earth, it cannot halt climate change. In fact, it would result in a completely new climate with very different effects in different regions. As these effects would be negative in some areas of the world (extreme drought, for example), it is highly unlikely that political consensus would be achieved. Risks Furthermore, geo-engineering is not without risk. For example, there is much uncertainty about the effects on the distribution of precipitation and heat around the world. Its application to solve a regional problem (to extend the monsoon season, for example) can lead to unpredictable, new problems for other countries. Achieving political consensus is most likely if the world as a whole is faced with a major disaster, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. However, even then politicians will ask themselves – given the risks involved in geo-engineering – whether adaptation to climate change is not a better solution. This is a blow to technocrats, acknowledge the researchers. 'In any case, geo-engineering is not going to be the breakthrough that some had expected.' AT: Ice AgeNo ice age- 97% of scientists agreeNews Hounds 2014 (Brian; Global warming? Fox news predicts a new ice age; Jul 6; www.newshounds.us/global_warming_fox_news_predicts_a_new_ice_age_07062014; kdf) Fox’s favorite climate skeptic, Joe Bastardi – a meteorologist, not a climate scientist – visited the Your World show last week where he insisted the planet is getting colder, not warmer. Host Neil Cavuto gave him a seal of approval by saying he’d believe Bastardi over the consensus. In a lengthy, well-documented post, Media Matters wrote about Bastardi: Fox News and Fox Business Network frequently host Joe Bastardi to comment on climate change. But Bastardi, who is a weather forecaster, not a climate researcher, has made inaccurate claims about climate science on multiple occasions and is not seen by experts as a credible source of climate information. But on Your World last week, Cavuto introduced Bastardi by saying, “Leave it to Joe Bastardi to whip up another storm of his own. He’s tweeting holy hell because the Antarctic is not as hot as hell as alarmists predicted.” In a lengthy interview which unquestioningly presented Bastardi as a credible expert on climate science, Cavuto helped validate Bastardi’s theory that the earth is now in a cooling cycle – by suggesting we’re headed for an ice age. Cavuto said, “I can remember as a kid, …all those Time magazine cover stories, documentaries, New York Times stories on the global cooling, the big freeze to come, Leonard Nimoy scaring the you-know-what out of us about being ready for the great winter that was going to grip the world. Maybe they were right, they were just 40 years early. …What’s going on?” Bastardi replied, “We were in a cold cycle, and I said this several years ago, on this network, that we were going back to where we were, by 2030. The global temperatures, measured objectively by satellites - remember we’ve only been measuring temperatures objectively since 1978 - would return back to where it was in ‘78 because we went through the cold cycles in the Pacific and on into the Atlantic. …It’s all cyclical in nature.” He finished with a smirk on his face. Cavuto said supportively, “I think what you just said is that you can’t buy the consensus. …Forty years ago, we were talking about great global cooling and I guess it goes back to who do you believe?” “Twenty years from now, we’re going to be hearing about the next ice age coming again,” Bastardi insisted. “Wow, amazing!” Cavuto said. “So what are you going to do? The French climate commission or Joe? I’m going with Joe. That’s me, that’s just my bias. Good seeing you my friend.” How about both men read that climate change is getting worse? The 97% of scientists who believe we’re causing climate change would laugh Bastardi off the premises. The claim that an ice age is pending is not rooted in scienceMooney 2014 (Chris; Why David Brat is completely wrong about climate science; Jun 11; grist.org/climate-energy/why-david-brat-is-completely-wrong-about-climate-science/; kdf) In a recent campaign event video (which has since been made private), Brat explains his free-marketeer perspective on environmental and energy problems. Naturally, he believes that American ingenuity will lead the way to a cleaner environment. But he also hints at a disbelief in the science of global warming, and alludes to a well-worn myth that has been widely used on the right to undermine trust in climate scientists – the idea that just a few decades ago, in the 1970s, climate experts all thought we were headed into “another Ice Age.” Here’s how Brat put it: “If you let Americans do their thing, there is no scarcity, right? They said we’re going to run out of food 200 years ago, and then we’re going to have another ice age. Now it’s, we’re heating up … .” At this point, Brat waves his hand dismissively. I reached out to the Brat campaign to ask if he believes in human-caused climate change; they did not immediately respond. Regardless, the myth that climate scientists, in the 1970s, all thought a new Ice Age was coming has been widely asserted by conservative and libertarian types ranging from George Will to Michael Crichton. And no wonder: It serves their political goals. It makes climate scientists seem quirky, wishy-washy, leaping from one conclusion to another. But it’s highly misleading. In 2008, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a full article dedicated to debunking this myth. Here’s a short excerpt: … the following pervasive myth arose: there was a consensus among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent . … A review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows this myth to be false. The myth’s basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today. In fact, emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then. So where did this odd idea — that within relatively recent memory, climate scientists were all worried about cooling, not warming — come from? After all, as far back as 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Science Advisory Committee detailed the risk of global warming due to fossil-fuel burning in an extensive appendix to a report on the environment. Concerns about warming were prominent even then. Nonetheless, the 1970s were part of a temporary cooling trend, at least in the northern hemisphere, and some journalists caught on. Some scientists also fanned the flames. Perhaps most notably, in 1975 Newsweek magazine ran a story entitled “The Cooling World.” This is arguably the most frequently cited piece of evidence for those who claim that scientists, at the time, thought global cooling was coming. That’s even though the story’s author, Peter Gwynne, has himself set the record straight, writing, “Several atmospheric scientists did indeed believe in global cooling, as I reported in the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek. But that was then.” And even then, this was certainly not a consensus position in the scientific community. The American Meteorological Society paper shows, through a scientific literature review, that from 1965 to 1979, “only 7 articles indicated cooling compared to 44 indicating warming.” Sure enough, by 1979, a major National Academy of Sciences report could be found highlighting the global warming threat and stating that if carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere double, we could see a warming of between 1.5 and 4 degrees Celsius. So no, scientists didn’t unanimously say, “We’re going to have another ice age.” And getting this right really matters. Because it shows that contrary to what Brat suggests, climate researchers are not mercurial, and were not all wrong just a few decades ago. And that, in turn, underscores the reality that their current conclusion — that humans are causing global warming — is based on a long-running and extremely well-established body of research and thinking.2 We control the internal link to ice ageOskin 2014 (Becky; Ice age reboot: ocean current shutdown viewed as culprit; Jun 26; https://news.yahoo.com/ice-age-reboot-ocean-current-shutdown-viewed-culprit-180323460.html; kdf) A dramatic slowdown in deep ocean currents matches a major reset in Earth's ice ages about 1 million years ago, new evidence from the South Atlantic seafloor suggests. The discovery doesn't mean the ocean current stall-out is the only culprit behind the change in Earth's incessant ice ages, the study authors said. However, the findings provide new evidence that Earth's oceans can significantly alter its climate. "We cannot tell for sure what broke the cycle," said lead study author Leopoldo Pena of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "Our evidence shows the oceans played a major role." [Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench] For unknown reasons, about 950,000 years ago, Earth's ice age cycles suddenly lengthened, from 41,000 years to 100,000 years. The planet's thermostat was tweaked at the same time, with ice ages growing colder than before. "This is the largest climatic change that has happened on our planet in the last 2 million years," Pena said. "For many decades, scientists have been trying to understand what happened." The big switch took place without the usual suspects, such as a drop in energy from the sun due to orbital wobbles. So scientists turned to climate change for a possible cause. Pena and his co-authors have now discovered that a huge ocean "conveyor belt" stalled at the same time as the ice age switch. Their findings were published today (June 26) in the journal Science Express. The conveyor belt is a global current system scientists call the thermohaline circulation (THC). The circulation pattern moves warm surface water from the Southern Hemisphere toward the northern latitudes, where it grows cold and salty and sinks. The denser water then flows back toward the south along the deep seafloor. The Gulf Stream is part of this giant conveyor belt. Paleoclimate records show the THC currents have operated for millions of years. [Video: Animation Reveals Ocean Currents] Tracing ancient currents To track the strength of the ancient THC currents, Pena analyzed levels of neodymium in minerals crusted onto tiny shells of dead plankton. The minerals were encrusted after the plankton died, as the shells dropped to the seafloor. The neodymium indicates where the deep seawater came from, Pena said. For example, waters from the North Atlantic have a distinct neodymium "flavor" versus waters from the North Pacific. By measuring the neodymium in shells in seafloor mud deposited during the past million years, Pena can estimate whether North Atlantic waters were flowing south, or if the current shut down. When the ice age cycle was every 41,000 years, the THC currents were normal strength even during glacial periods, the researchers found. But 950,000 years ago, something shut down the conveyor belt during a glacial period. The crisis lasted 100,000 years, Pena said, and then the current recovered. However, after the transition, when Earth was in its 100,000-year ice age cycle, the ocean current grew weaker or stalled every time there was an ice age. The researchers suspect the colder ice ages after the big flip meant large ice sheets in the North Atlantic shut down the ocean conveyor belt. But for now, Pena says scientists aren't sure which came first — bigger ice sheets or a broken ocean conveyor belt. There was also a huge drop in carbon dioxide 950,000 years ago, which also played a role in cooling the planet. The sluggish conveyor belt could have contributed to this drop by hoarding the greenhouse gas in the deep ocean, Pena said. "It's a chicken-and-egg question," Pena said. Christopher Charles, a climate scientist who was not involved in the study, agrees that it's unlikely a single cause will emerge. The deep ocean could be one of many triggers for the ice age change. "It's extremely likely that the switch in ice age cycling was at least strongly influenced by, if not controlled by, carbon cycling," said Charles, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. "It would not be at all surprising to me if ocean mixing somehow played a role in governing the storage of carbon in the deep ocean." 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