417 Ss 2ac Answers To Algae Disad

Dartmouth Debate Institute 2008

2 AC Blocks

Regan

Serrano/Strange

2 AC AT: Algae Disad 1. No impact A. ditner’s a lawyer-no reason he knows anything about the environment. B. Empirics-we’ve been killing species for decades and haven’t caused extinction yet. 2. Alt causes to algae destruction. A. nutrient enrichment and pollutants-that’s in their dube evidence B. Lots of other things. Donna R. Christie, Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law, August, ‘7 (Environmental Law Floundering at Sea, 82 Wash. L. Rev. 533, p. Lexis) [Bozman] [*537] As we fast forward over thirty years, not one, but two commissions have recently produced reports to recommend new directions for United States ocean policy in this century. The Pew Oceans Commission released an independent report, America's Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change, n24 in May 2003. A year later, the United States Commission on Ocean Policy (USCOP), a body appointed by President Bush, published An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century. n25 During the intervening period since the Stratton Commission, the nation's seas changed substantially: most notably, the recent commissions were dealing with a very different American ocean. The United States ocean jurisdictional claims had expanded to a twelve-mile territorial sea, a twenty-four-mile contiguous zone, a 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and a continental shelf that potentially could extend more than 300 miles offshore - quite different from the narrow three-mile belt of sovereignty and more limited continental shelf claim at the time of the Stratton Commission . n26 Stresses on coastal waters increased because of population

growth in coastal watershed counties, which exceeded thirty-seven million people between 1970 and 2000 and is expected to increase another twenty-one million by 2015. n27 Much of this coastal population is concentrated in coastal areas that are the most ecologically sensitive and in areas that are the most susceptible to hurricanes. n28 The overall condition of coastal waters is now judged to be somewhere between poor and fair, n29 and beach closures due to the presence of pathogens or algae outbreaks, like red tide, have become common. n30 Numerous offshore hypoxic areas and "dead zones," including a major dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, have been identified. n31 Moreover, in this intervening period, concerns about the effect of global climate change on the oceans [*538] emerged, and the nation became aware that the oceans were not endlessly resilient but, in fact, both finite and fragile. n32

3. No link-algae would be produced in warehouses-Danigole says this is easy and more cost efficient than taking them from the environment-recent construction proves. Clayton Cornell, 3/28/’8 (http://gas2.org/2008/03/29/first-algae-biodiesel-plant-goes-online-april-1-2008/) [Bozman] PetroSun has announced it will begin operation of its commercial algae-to-biofuels facility on April 1st, 2008. The facility, located in Rio Hondo Texas, will produce an estimated 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million lbs. of biomass per year off a series of saltwater ponds spanning 1,100 acres. Twenty of those acres will be reserved for the experimental production of a renewable JP8 jetfuel.

4. Climate change makes their impacts inevitable. Nicholas Stern, Prof. @ London School of Economics, ‘7 (The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, p. 72) Ocean acidification, a direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels, will have major effects on marine ecosystems, with possible adverse consequences on fish stocks. For fisheries, information on the likely impacts of climate change is very limited – a major gap in knowledge considering that about one billion people worldwide (one-sixth of the world’s population) rely on fish as their primary source of animal protein. While higher ocean temperatures may increase growth rates of some fish, reduced nutrient supplies due to warming may limit growth. Ocean acidification is likely to be particularly damaging. The oceans have become more acidic in the past 200 years, because of chemical changes

caused by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide dissolving in seawater.44 If global emissions continue to rise on current trends, ocean acidity is likely to increase further, with pH declining by an additional 0.15 units if carbon dioxide levels double (to 560 ppm) relative to pre-industrial and an additional 0.3 units if carbon dioxide levels treble (to 840 ppm).45 Changes on this scale have not been experienced for hundreds of thousands of years and are occurring at an extremely rapid rate. Increasing ocean acidity makes it harder for many ocean creatures to form shells and skeletons from calcium carbonate. These chemical changes have the potential to disrupt marine ecosystems irreversibly - at the very least halting the growth of corals, which provide important nursery grounds for commercial fish, and damaging molluscs and certain types of plankton at the base of the food chain. Plankton and marine snails are critical to sustaining species such as salmon, mackerel and baleen whales, and such changes are expected to have serious but as-yetunquantified wider impacts.

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Dartmouth Debate Institute 2008

2 AC Blocks

Regan

Serrano/Strange

2 AC AT: Algae Disad 5. Species loss won’t cause extinction. Holly Doremus, Professor of Law @ UC Davis, Winter, 2K (The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse, 57 Wash & Lee L. Rev. 11, p. Lexis) In recent years, this discourse frequently has taken the form of the ecological horror story . That too is no mystery. The ecological horror story is unquestionably an attention-getter, especially in the hands of skilled writers [*46] like Carson and the Ehrlichs. The image of the airplane earth, its wings wobbling as rivet after rivet is carelessly popped out, is difficult to ignore. The apocalyptic depiction of an impending crisis of potentially dire proportions is designed to spur the political community to quick action . Furthermore, this story suggests a goal that appeals to many nature lovers: that virtually everything must be protected. To reinforce this suggestion, tellers of the ecological horror story often imply that the relative importance of various rivets to the ecological plane cannot be determined. They offer reams of data and dozens of anecdotes demonstrating the unexpected value of apparently useless parts of nature. The moth that saved Australia from prickly pear invasion, the scrubby Pacific yew, and the downright unattractive leech are among the uncharismatic flora and fauna who star in these anecdotes. n211 The moral is obvious: because we cannot be sure which rivets are holding the plane together, saving them all is the only sensible course. Notwithstanding its attractions, the material discourse in general, and the ecological horror story in particular, are not likely to generate policies that will satisfy nature lovers. The ecological horror story implies that there is no reason to protect nature until catastrophe looms. The Ehrlichs' rivet-popper account, for example, presents species simply as the (fungible) hardware holding together the ecosystem. If we could be reasonably certain that a particular rivet was not needed to prevent a crash, the rivet-popper story suggests that we would lose very little by pulling it out. Many environmentalists, though, would disagree. n212 Reluctant to concede such losses, tellers of the ecological horror story highlight how close a catastrophe might be, and how little we know about what actions might trigger one. But the apocalyptic vision is less credible today than it seemed in the 1970s. Although it is clear that the earth is experiencing a mass wave of extinctions, n213 the complete elimination of life on earth seems unlikely. n214 Life is remarkably robust. Nor is human extinction probable any time soon. Homo sapiens is adaptable to nearly any environment. Even if the world of the future includes far fewer species, it likely will hold people. n215 One response to this credibility problem tones the story down a bit, arguing not that humans will go extinct but that ecological disruption will bring economies, and consequently civilizations, to their knees. n216 But this too may be overstating the case. Most ecosystem functions are performed by multiple species. This functional redundancy means that a high proportion of species can be lost without precipitating a collapse.

2

Dartmouth Debate Institute 2008

2 AC Blocks

Regan

Serrano/Strange

1 AR XT 2: Alt Causes Over fishing outweighs their internal link to marine biodiversity. Donna R. Christie, Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law, August, ‘7 (Environmental Law Floundering at Sea, 82 Wash. L. Rev. 533, p. Lexis) [Bozman] We will likely never know enough about the oceans to anticipate all the ramifications of our actions. We will continue to make mistakes, and we can not always expect the oceans to be resilient enough to rebound. We are aware now, for example, that effects of overfishing are not [*542] limited to the direct population effects on the target species. A report for the Pew Oceans Commission entitled Ecological Effects of Fishing in Marine Ecosystems of the United States n56 surveyed the direct and indirect effects of overfishing, bycatch, habitat degradation by destructive fishing gear, and fishing-induced food web changes. The consequences of these fishing practices include "changes in the structure of marine habitats that ultimately influence the diversity, biomass, and productivity of the associated biota; removal of predators, which disrupts and truncates trophic relationships; and endangerment of marine mammals, sea turtles, some seabirds, and even some fish." n57 The report concluded that "the weight of evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the unintended consequences of fishing on marine ecosystems are severe, dramatic, and in some cases irreversible." n58

3

Dartmouth Debate Institute 2008

2 AC Blocks

Regan

Serrano/Strange

1 AR XT 4: Algae Manmade Algae grown in the desert. Michael Briggs, Professor of Physics at the University of New Hampshire, ‘4 (http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html) [Bozman] The Office of Fuels Development, a division of the Department of Energy, funded a program from 1978 through 1996 under the National Renewable Energy Laboratory known as the "Aquatic Species Program". The focus of this program was to investigate highoil algaes that could be grown specifically for the purpose of wide scale biodiesel production1. The research began as a project looking into using quick-growing algae to sequester carbon in CO 2 emissions from coal power plants. Noticing that some algae have very high oil content, the project shifted its focus to growing algae for another purpose - producing biodiesel. Some species of algae are ideally suited to biodiesel production due to their high oil content (some well over 50% oil), and extremely fast growth rates. From the results of the Aquatic Species Program2, algae farms would let us supply enough biodiesel to completely replace petroleum as a transportation fuel in the US (as well as its other main use - home heating oil) - but we first have to solve a few of the problems they encountered along the way. NREL's research focused on the development of algae farms in desert regions, using shallow saltwater pools for growing the algae. Using saltwater eliminates the need for desalination, but could lead to problems as far as salt build-up in bonds. Building the ponds in deserts also leads to problems of high evaporation rates. There are solutions to these problems, but for the purpose of this paper, we will focus instead on the potential such ponds can promise, ignoring for the moment the methods of addressing the solvable challenges remaining when the Aquatic Species Program at NREL ended.

Most cost effective means of production is artifical creation of algae. Wikipedia, legit source, accessed 8/5/’8 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel#Algae_cultivation) [Bozman] Algae grow rapidly and can have a high percentage of lipids, or oils. They can double their mass several times a day and produce at least 15 times more oil per acre than alternatives such as rapeseed, palms, soybeans, or jatropha. Moreover, algae-growing facilities can be built on coastal land unsuitable for conventional agriculture.The hard part about algae production is growing the algae in a controlled way and harvesting it efficiently. Most companies pursuing algae as a source of biofuels are pumping nutrient-laden water through plastic tubes (called "bioreactors" ) that are exposed to sunlight (and so called photobioreactors or PBR). Running a PBR is more difficult than a open pond, and more costly.

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