No nasa space launches now- partisan fighting and controversies prevent all funding Handberg 7-25

Impact-Agriculture

The high-decibel message: Agriculture has arrived. It's an unprecedented time of power and importance for the industry in the nation's capital. All these companies and organizations are quick to point out that, while all part of the broad agriculture tapestry, they're not exactly natural allies. When fertilizer prices go up, the farmers take a hit; when commodity prices go up, the processors take a hit; when fuel prices go up, everyone takes a hit (except, perhaps, ethanol). But underneath the industry's dozens of competing interests is one overarching theme--trade--and a question: Which presidential candidate best helps their interests? Long something of an afterthought, an over-subsidized laggard during the infotech boom, agriculture is now a burgeoning bright spot in a largely troubled economy. While government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) are teetering on the edge of nationalization, the Farm Credit System, a forgotten government-sponsored enterprise, is buzzing along. Gone are the days where debt from Fannie and Freddie was second only to U.S. Treasuries. Today, spreads are lower in the farm credit system, a testament to the surging strength of agriculture, says AgStar Financial President Paul DeBriyn and a member of the board of directors for Farmer Mac. And with long-standing subsidies secured by passage of the 2008 farm bill earlier this year, industry leaders in Minneapolis were free to focus on open markets for a new generation of products. Technology is rapidly changing the interests of the industry. John Johnson, the chief executive of CHS (nasdaq: CHSCP - news - people ), a major agriculture co-op, explains the industry's new fundamentals. Improvements in seeds and farming practices allowed corn yields to double in 15 years. As crops get more bug-resistant and drought-resistant and can grow in more tightly planted rows, that number could double again in the next couple of decades. In the past, there's been little incentive to develop this new lab-grown abundance. Demand in the U.S. grows mostly in step with the population, which hardly grows at all. This led to the industry taking a bad rap for overproduction--for stuffing calories into Twinkies or letting crops rot in silos. Now, rising global demand, for food and fuels, changes the equation. Increasing production is needed to feed the world's masses--and gas tanks. The producers of genetically modified seeds are going from Dr. FrankenFoods to the potential saviors of the global hungry.

Impact-Phytoplankton

Phytoplankton key to ocean life, breathable air, and ozone formation

Westenskow 8 (Rosalie, “Analysis: Acidic oceans may snarl food web,” Jun 6, 2008, http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Analysis_Acidic_oceans_may_snarl_food_web_999.html)

As carbon dioxide increases in oceans, the acidity of the water also rises, and this change could affect a wide variety of organisms, said Scott Doney, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a non-profit research institute based in Woods Hole, Mass. "Greater acidity slows the growth or even dissolves ocean plant and animal shells built from calcium carbonate," Doney told representatives in the House Committee on Energy and the Environment. "Acidification thus threatens a wide range of marine organisms, from microscopic plankton and shellfish to massive coral reefs." If small organisms, like phytoplankton, are knocked out by acidity, the ripples would be far-reaching, said David Adamec, head of ocean sciences at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "If the amount of phytoplankton is reduced, you reduce the amount of photosynthesis going on in the ocean," Adamec told United Press International. "Those little guys are responsible for half of the oxygen you're breathing right now." A hit to microscopic organisms can also bring down a whole food chain. For instance, several years ago, an El Nino event wiped out the phytoplankton near the Galapagos Islands. That year, juvenile bird and seal populations almost disappeared. If ocean acidity stunted phytoplankton populations like the El Nino did that year, a similar result would occur -- but it would last for much longer than one year, potentially leading to extinction for some species, Adamec said. While it's clear increased acidity makes it difficult for phytoplankton to thrive, scientists don't know what level of acidity will result in catastrophic damages, said Wayne Esaias, a NASA oceanographer. "There's no hard and fast number we can use," he told UPI. In fact, although scientists can guess at the impacts of acidity, no one's sure what will happen in reality. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., pointed to this uncertainty at Thursday's hearing. "The ocean will be very different with increased levels of carbon dioxide, but I don't know if it will be better or worse," Bartlett said. However, even though it's not clear what the changes will be, the risk of doing nothing could be disastrous for ecosystems, said Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, a non-profit research organization. "The systems that are adapted to very precise chemical or climatological conditions will disappear and be replaced by species which, on land, we call weeds," Caldeira said. "What is the level of irreversible environmental risk that you're willing to take?" It's precisely this uncertainty that the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act attempts to address. The bill creates a federal committee within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor carbon dioxide levels in ocean waters and research the impacts of acidification. like Bishop. "We would lose everything," he told UP
Loss of ocean life causes extinction

Craig, 2003 (Robin Kundis, Associate professor of law, Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, "Taking Steps Toward Marine Wilderness Protection?")

The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," ⁿ¹⁷ oceans provide food; marketable goods such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. ⁿ¹⁸ Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." ⁿ¹⁹ Ocean and coastal ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. ⁿ²⁰ In addition, many people assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future generations. ⁿ²¹ Traditionally, land-bound humans have regarded the ocean as an inexhaustible resource and have pursued consumptive and extractive uses of the seas, such as fishing, with little thought of conservation. ⁿ²² In the last two or three centuries, however, humanity has overstressed the world's oceans, proving that the ocean's productivity is limited. ⁿ²³ Degradation of the marine environment is becoming increasingly obvious: Scientists have mounting evidence of rapidly accelerating declines in once-abundant populations of cod, haddock, flounder, and scores of other  [*162]  fish species, as well as mollusks, crustaceans, birds, and plants.

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