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- Impact defense
- Empirics disprove Biod impacts
- Biodiversity Bad
- Failing to check biodiversity causes ecosystem collapse – biodiversity inevitably peaks and then implodes
AT: Arctic! UQNo impact uniqueness – Russia’s drilling and spilling nowAdams, 14 Emily E. Adams, Staff Researcher at Earth Policy Institute, “Fossil Fuel Development in the Arctic is a Bad Investment,” 9/17/14, http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2014/update125 // IS Currently, about 10 percent of the world’s oil and one-quarter of its natural gas production come from the Arctic region, which has warmed by more than 2 degrees Celsius since the mid-1960s. Countries that border the Arctic Ocean are staking claims to expand their rights beyond the traditional 200-mile exclusive economic zone in anticipation of future oil and gas prospects. According to current estimates, the United States has the largest Arctic oil resources, both on and offshore. Russia comes in second for oil, but it has the most natural gas. Norway and Greenland are virtually tied for third largest combined oil and gas resources. Canada comes in fifth, with almost equal parts oil and natural gas. In developing these resources, Russia is leading the pack. Production has started at almost all of the 43 large oil and natural gas fields that have been discovered in the Russian Arctic, both on land and offshore. Russia drew its first oil from an offshore rig in Arctic waters in December 2013. On August 9, 2014, ExxonMobil and Russia’s Rosneft together began drilling Russia’s northernmost oil well offshore of Siberia. Russia’s Novatek is working with France’s Total and the China National Petroleum Corp to develop a liquefied natural gas plant in the Arctic. However, tightening U.S. and European sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis threaten the future of these joint ventures. Norway—where the oil and gas industry accounts for almost a third of government revenues—currently boasts the only operating liquefied natural gas facility north of the Arctic Circle, operated by Statoil in the Barents Sea. Along with Italy’s Eni, Statoil is also involved with the development of the Goliat oil field, expected to come online in 2015. This will be the first oil production in the richly endowed Barents Sea, bordered by Norway and Russia. To the north and west, Greenland eagerly auctioned off drilling licenses first in the late 1970s and more recently in the 2000s, but so far all of its wells have turned up dry. Canada had exploratory drilling in its Arctic territory in the 1970s and 1980s, but this dropped off in the 1990s. Since then, only one offshore exploratory well has been drilled, in 2005–06, but it was subsequently abandoned. One impediment to further development is the lack of infrastructure to bring the fossil fuels to market, which often requires large resource finds in order to finance its construction. In Alaska, the onshore Prudhoe Bay oil field—one of North America’s largest—has served this role. Discovered in 1967, it was large enough to finance construction of the TransAlaska Pipeline. Once that was built, development of smaller nearby oil fields became commercially viable. Royal Dutch Shell has come the closest to developing Alaska’s offshore oil. As oil prices rose in the 2000s, so did Shell’s interest. Then Shell’s plans were delayed by court cases and a U.S. government moratorium on Arctic activity following BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Further delays followed the damage to a Shell containment dome, which is designed to catch oil in the event of a spill, during testing in Puget Sound in Washington State. In 2012, Shell had a stop-start drilling season, interrupted by drifting icebergs, which was capped off by one of its drill rigs running aground in a heavy storm. The company opted to skip drilling entirely in 2013. In early 2014, a federal court ruled that the U.S. government made a fundamental mistake when calculating the impact of oil and gas development on the Arctic environment. Therefore Shell’s licenses to drill were invalid and it missed another drilling season. Thus far, Shell does not have a drop of oil to show for the $5 billion it spent on its recent efforts off of Alaska, yet it has taken the first steps to try again in 2015. As Shell has seen, operating in the Arctic brings great risks. The shrinking Arctic sea ice allows waves to become more powerful. The remaining ice can be more easily broken up into ice floes that can collide with vessels or drilling platforms. Large icebergs can scour the ocean floor, bursting pipes or other buried infrastructure. Much of the onshore infrastructure is built on permafrost—frozen ground—that can shift as the ground thaws from regional warming, threatening pipe ruptures. Already, official Russian sources estimate that there have been more than 20,000 oil spills annually from pipelines across Russia in recent years. Arctic operations are far away from major emergency response support. The freezing conditions make it unsafe for crews to be outside for extended periods of time. Even communication systems are less reliable at the far end of the Earth. Why take such risks to pursue these dirty fuels when alternatives to oil and gas are there for the taking? Impact defenseBiodiversity loss doesn’t cause extinction – other species will adaptDodds 7 [Donald J. Dodds- M.S. P.E., President of the North Pacific Research, “The Myth of Biodiversity,” northpacificresearch.com/downloads/The_myth_of_biodiversity.doc , mm] Notice next that at least ten times biodiversity fell rapidly; none of these extreme reductions in biodiversity were caused by humans. Around 250 million years ago the number of genera was reduce 85 percent from about 1200 to around 200, by any definition a significant reduction in biodiversity. Now notice that after this extinction a steep and rapid rise of biodiversity. In fact, if you look closely at the curve, you will find that every mass-extinction was followed by a massive increase in biodiversity. Why was that? Do you suppose it had anything to do with the number environmental niches available for exploitation? If you do, you are right. Extinctions are necessary for creation. Each time a mass extinction occurs the world is filled with new and better-adapted species. That is the way evolution works, its called survival of the fittest. Those species that could not adapted to the changing world conditions simply disappeared and better species evolved. How efficient is that? Those that could adapt to change continued to thrive. For example, the cockroach and the shark have been around well over 300 million years. There is a pair to draw to, two successful species that any creator would be proud to produce. To date these creatures have successful survived six extinctions, without the aid of humans or the EPA. Empirics disprove Biod impactsCampbell 11 [Hank Campbell- creator of Science 2.0, a community of research professors, post-docs, science book authors and Nobel laureates collaborating over scientific projects, “I Wouldn't Worry About The Latest Mass Extinction Scare,” March 2011, http://www.science20.com/science_20/i_wouldnt_worry_about_latest_mass_extinction_scare-76989, mm] You've seen it everywhere by now - Earth's sixth mass extinction: Is it almost here? and other articles discussing an article in Nature (471, 51–57 doi:10.1038/nature09678) claiming the end of the world is nigh. ¶ Hey, I like to live in important times. So do most people. And something so important it has only happened 5 times in 540 million years, well that is really special. But is it real? ¶ Anthony Barnosky, integrative biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and first author of the paper, claims that if currently threatened species, those officially classed as critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable, actually went extinct, and that rate of extinction continued, the sixth mass extinction could arrive in 3-22 centuries. ¶ Wait, what?? That's a lot of helping verbs confusing what should be a fairly clear issue, if it were clear. ¶ If you know anything about species and extinction, you have already read one paragraph of my overview and seen the flaws in their model. Taking a few extinct mammal species that we know about and then extrapolating that out to be extinction hysteria right now if we don't do something about global warming is not good science. Worse, an integrative biologist is saying evolution does not happen. Polar bears did not exist forever, they came into existence 150,000 years ago - because of the Ice Age. ¶ Greenpeace co-founder and ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore told a global warming skepticism site, “I quit my life-long subscription to National Geographic when they published a similar 'sixth mass extinction' article in February 1999. This [latest journal] Nature article just re-hashes this theme” and "The fact that the study did make it through peer-review indicates that the peer review process has become corrupted.” ¶ Well, how did it make it through peer review? Read this bizarre justification of their methodology; "If you look only at the critically endangered mammals--those where the risk of extinction is at least 50 percent within three of their generations--and assume that their time will run out and they will be extinct in 1,000 years, that puts us clearly outside any range of normal and tells us that we are moving into the mass extinction realm." ¶ Well, greater extinctions occurred when Europeans visited the Americas and in a much shorter time. And since we don't know how many species there are now, or have ever been, if someone makes a model and claims tens of thousands of species are going extinct today, that sets off cultural alarms. It's not science, though. ¶ If only 1% of species have gone extinct in the groups we really know much about, that is hardly a time for panic, especially if some 99 percent of all species that have ever existed we don't know anything about because they...went extinct. And we did not. ¶ It won't keep some researchers, and the mass media, from pushing the panic button. Co-author Charles Marshall, also an integrative biologist at UC-Berkeley wants to keep the panic button fully engaged by emphasizing that the small number of recorded extinctions to date does not mean we are not in a crisis. "Just because the magnitude is low compared to the biggest mass extinctions we've seen in half a billion years doesn't mean they aren't significant." ¶ It's a double negative, bad logic and questionable science, though. Biodiversity BadBiod is bad – it increases the risk of collapseNaeem, 02 (Shahid Naeem - Director of Science at Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), Professor and Chair of Columbia University Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, 07 March 2002, Nature Magazine, “Biodiversity: Biodiversity equals instability?,” pg. 23, CM) Pfisterer and Schmid [3] studied biomass production in a combinatorial plant-diversity experiment, which consisted of an array of replicate grassland plots that varied both in their number of plant species (from 1 to 32) and in their combination of species. The authors used their results to test the venerable 'insurance' hypothesis of ecosystem stability. This hypothesis is one of several that have featured in the long-standing ecological debate over the relationship between complexity (diversity) and stability [4]. Over the course of this debate, the prevailing view has see-sawed between the thesis that diversity begets stability, and the antithesis that diversity either leads to instability or is irrelevant. Chief among the 'begets-stability' theories is the insurance hypothesis -- the impeccably logical notion that having a variety of species insures an ecosystem against a range of environmental upsets. For example, suppose an ecosystem faces a drought, then a flood, which in turn is followed by a fire. According to the insurance hypothesis, if that ecosystem is diverse -- if it has some species that can tolerate drought, some that are flood-resistant and some that are fire-tolerant -- then two scenarios are likely. The ecosystem may show resistance, remaining broadly unchanged, because its many species buffer it against damage. Or it may show resilience: if it does get hammered, it may bounce back to its original state quickly because the tolerant species ultimately drive the recovery process and compensate for the temporary loss of their less hardy compatriots. But Pfisterer and Schmid [3] found that, when challenged with an experimentally induced drought, species-poor communities were both more resistant and more resilient (as reflected by their ability to sustain and recover pre-drought biomass production) than plots of higher diversity. The higher-diversity plots were originally more productive, but their resistance and resilience -- that is, their stability -- was low (Fig. 1). This is the opposite of what the insurance hypothesis predicts. It also contrasts with what combinatorial 'microcosm' experiments have found [5, 6] and what theoretical models of biodiversity have claimed [4]. Pfisterer and Schmid's findings [3] appear to support those who claim that diversity does not lead to stability. But there's a twist, and those on each side of the debate run the risk of having their own pet theories turned against them. Pfisterer and Schmid suggest that the observed inverse association between diversity and stability is due to a theoretical mechanism known as niche complementarity. This mechanism, however, is the very same as that touted as the chief cause of the positive biodiversity-productivity relationships found in other combinatorial biodiversity experiments, such as those at Cedar Creek [7] and those run by the BIODEPTH consortium [8]. The central idea of niche complementarity is that a community of species whose niches complement one another is more efficient in its use of resources than an equivalent set of monocultures. For example, a uniform mixture of early- and late-season plants and shallow- and deep-rooting plants that are spread over 4 m2 will yield more biomass than combined 1-m2 monocultures of each species [7, 9]. So niche complementarity can explain why higher diversity tends to lead to higher productivity, and has also been adopted by those in the 'diversity leads to stability' camp because one would expect that more efficient communities would fare better in the face of stress. Those on the other side, however, feel that existing data better support a mechanism known as sampling, where diverse communities produce more biomass simply because they are more likely to contain productive species [10, 11]. In other words, we can't read too much into experiments in which higher diversity leads to greater productivity. What Pfisterer and Schmid suggest is that complementarity among species in a diverse plot could be its downfall when faced with perturbation. Niche complementarity is disrupted and so the whole community suffers. But this is not a problem for less diverse plots. So those in the 'diversity begets stability' camp risk being hoist on the petard of their own theory of niche complementarity. Meanwhile, although Pfisterer and Schmid's findings support the idea that diversity does not lead to stability, the authors reject a large role for sampling -- the theory generally favoured by the camp that disagrees with the idea that biodiversity leads to stability. Failing to check biodiversity causes ecosystem collapse – biodiversity inevitably peaks and then implodesBoulter, 02 (Michael Boulter - professor for paleobiology at the Natural History Museum and the University of East London, former editor to the Palaeontological Association, former secretary to the International Organization of Palaeobotany, and UK representative at the International Union of Biological Sciences, “Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man,” pg. 147, CM) We know very little detail of such interactions between environmental biology and cell biology and how they hear on evolution. Here is one possible scenario. When a new group originates, with a small number of individuals successfully invading newly available territory and their new genome provides the biochemistry that best fits the new surroundings, diversification gathers pace. After a slow start, rapid diversification readies a clear peak, followed by a slow, long fall in the range of diversity, leading to extinction. It follows that for large clades with greater diversity at the time of maximum expansion, it will take longer for that clade to become extinct. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that extinction will occur. There is a complete lack of evidence for the position that biodiversity increase stability – if anything studies show the opposite is trueMertz et al 03 (Leslie Mertz – biologist and veteran freelance science writer, editor, and consultant, Science in Dispute Vol. 2, “ Does greater species diversity lead to greater stability in ecosystems,” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5204/is_2003/ai_n19124307/?tag=content;col1, CM) Diversity Is No Prerequisite As Daniel Goodman, of Montana State University, wrote in a 1975 examination of the stability-diversity controversy, there have been no experiments, field studies, or model systems that have proved a connection between greater diversity and stability. He added, "We conclude that there is no simple relationship between diversity and stability in ecological systems." Those words still hold today. In 1998 another group of scientists (Chapin, Sala, and Burke) reviewed much of the literature surrounding the connection between diversity and stability in their paper "Ecosystem Consequences of Changing Biodiversity," which appeared in the journal BioScience. They concluded that research that had inferred relationships between diversity and stability had relied on simple systems and may not translate well to the more complex systems common in nature. Although they noted that several studies imply a relationship between diversity and ecosystem stability, they added, "At present, too few experiments have been conducted to draw convincing generalizations." In summary, none of the studies presented here proves beyond doubt that less species diversity produces a more stable natural ecosystem. However, the combination of studies does provide considerable evidence that greater diversity is not a requirement for ecosystem stability. Several of the studies also suggest that the stability of the system may be the driving factor in whether a community has high or low species diversity. Despite decades of research, the question of what makes a system stable remains largely unanswered. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.65 Mb. Share with your friends:
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