1Planet Debate 2014 Ocean Remote Sensing Aff Oceans TopicPlan2Contention I Climate Change3Contention II Smart Power10Topicality Ocean Exploration14FYI How Ocean Satellite Monitoring Occurs15Solvency Satellite Solvency16Solvency General Adaptation17Solvency Information Critical to Adaptation18Solvency Need to Monitor Ecosystems24Solvency US Climate Leadership25Solvency Plan Advocacy26Solvency A2: OCEAN Monitoring Not Key28Solvency -- Information Solves29Solvency More Information Key32Solvency Federal Government Solves33Solvency Adaptation Solvency34---Solves Biodiversity37---Solves Ecosystems38---Solves Oceans39---Solves Disasters40---Solves Disease42---Solves Sea Levels45---Solves Agriculture46AT: Tea Party48AT: Not Enough50AT: Emissions Cuts Key51AT: Adaptation Fails53AT: Adaptation Bad55AT: Too Slow57AT: Poor People58AT: Poor Wont Do It59Climate Change Ocean Acidification60Climate Change - -Climate Change Killing the Ocean62Climate Change -- Inevitable64Climate Change Anthropogenic68Climate change heading to 6deg73Add-On -- Economy75More Resources82Add-On Coastal Zone Management83Add-On Marine Protected Areas87Add-on General Environment.92Add-On Oil Spills94Plan

The United States federal government should provide adequate support for ocean exploration through earth observation satellites.Contention I Climate ChangeClimate change is already being felt and some of the impacts could be irreversible. Knowledge is needed to take appropriate action to avoid the impacts.

The Guardian, March 28, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/28/ipcc-report-climate-change-report-human-natural-systems

Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday. Government officials and scientists are gathered in Yokohama this week to wrangle over every line of a summary of the report before the final wording is released on Monday the first update in seven years. Nearly 500 people must sign off on the exact wording of the summary, including the 66 expert authors, 271 officials from 115 countries, and 57 observers. But governments have already signed off on the critical finding that climate change is already having an effect, and that even a small amount of warming in the future could lead to "abrupt and irreversible changes", according to documents seen by the Guardian."In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans," the final report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will say. Some parts of the world could soon be at a tipping point. For others, that tipping point has already arrived. "Both warm water coral reef and Arctic ecosystems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts," the approved version of the report will say.This will be the second of three reports on the causes, consequences of and solutions to climate change, drawing on researchers from around the world.The first report, released last September in Stockholm, found humans were the "dominant cause" of climate change, and warned that much of the world's fossil fuel reserves would have to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change.This report will, for the first time, look at the effects of climate change as a series of risks with those risks multiplying as temperatures warm.The thinking behind the decision was to encourage governments to prepare for the full range of potential consequences under climate change.It's much more about what are the smart things to do then what do we know with absolute certainty," said Chris Field, one of the co-chairs overseeing the report. "If we want to take a smart approach to the future, we need to consider a full range of possible outcomes and that means not only the more likely outcomes, but also outcomes for truly catastrophic impacts, even if those are lower probability," he said. The gravest of those risks was to people in low-lying coastal areas and on small islands, because of storm surges, coastal flooding and sea-level rise.But people living in large urban areas would also be at risk from inland flooding that wipes out homes and businesses, water treatment centres and power plants, as well as from extreme heatwaves. Food production was also at risk, the report said, from drought, flooding, and changing rainfall patterns. Crop yields could decline by 2% a decade over the rest of the century. Fisheries will also be affected, with ocean chemistry thrown off balance by climate change. Some fish in the tropics could become extinct. Other species, especially in northern latitudes, are on the move.Drought could put safe drinking water in short supply. Storms could wipe out electricity stations, and damage other infrastructure, the report is expected to say. Those risks will not be borne equally, according to draft versions of the report circulated before the meeting. The poor, the young and the elderly in all countries will all be more vulnerable to climate risks. Climate change will slow down economic growth, and create new "poverty traps". Some areas of the world will also be more vulnerable such as south Asia and south-east Asia. The biggest potential risk, however, was of a number of those scenarios unfolding at the same time, leading to conflicts and wars, or turning regional problem into a global crisis, said Saleemul Haq, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development and one of the authors of the report. "The really scary impacts are when things start getting together globally," he said. "If you have a crisis in two or three places around the world, suddenly it's not a local crisis. It is a global crisis, and the repercussions of things going bad in several different places are very severe."There was controversy in the run-up to the report's release when one of the 70 authors of a draft said he had pulled out of the writing team because it was "alarmist" about the threat. Prof Richard Tol, an economist at Sussex University, said he disagreed with some findings of the summary. But British officials branded his assessment of the economic costs of climate change as "deeply misleading".The report argues that the likelihood and potential consequences of many of these risks could be lowered if ambitious action is taken to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. It also finds that governments if they act now can help protect populations from those risks. But the report also acknowledges that a certain amount of warming is already locked in, and that in some instances there is no way to escape the effects of climate change. The 2007 report on the effects of climate change contained an error that damaged the credibility of the UN climate panel, the erroneous claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035. This year's report will be subject to far more rigorous scrutiny, scientists said. It will also benefit from an explosion of scientific research. The number of scientific publications on the impacts of climate change doubled between 2005 and 2010, the report will say. Researchers said they also hoped to bring a fresh take on the issue. They said they hoped the reframing of the issue as a series of risks would help governments respond more rapidly to climate change."Previously the IPCC was accused of being very conservative," said Gary Yohe, professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University, one of the authors of the report. "This allows them to be less conservative without being open to criticism that they are just trying to scare people to death."Adaptation is critical to avoid the impacts

USA Today Editorial Board, April 1, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/04/01/climate-change-global-warming-ipcc-editorials-debates/7175157/As a piece of literature, the latest report from the United Nations' expert organization on climate change is no John Grisham page-turner. Pulled together by 309 authors and editors from 70 countries, the document released this week brings to mind the saying about a camel being a horse designed by committee. Despite the turgid prose, excessive acronyms and bewildering flow charts, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes an important contribution, most notably with its new emphasis on adaptation.Three key takeaways:Global warming is here, now and, yes, global. The list of horribles likely to occur if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked is already familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. Rising sea levels. Displacement. Disease. Food shortages. Violent confrontations over resources.What the report also makes clear, however, is that the threat isn't just distant and theoretical. "The effects of climate change are already occurring on all continents and across the oceans," a summary states. "They are occurring from the tropics to the poles, from small islands to large continents, and from the wealthiest countries to the poorest." In the USA, these effects include more intense heat waves and droughts, shrinking snowpack in the Western mountains, and melting glaciers and eroding shorelines in Alaska. A global problem requires a global response. Yes, as the world's second leading emitter of carbon dioxide (5.2 billion metric tons in 2012), the United States should play more of a leadership role in curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration is taking worthwhile steps to limit carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and methane emissions from natural gas production. Better still, though politically difficult, would be a tax or other mechanism that puts a price on carbon pollution. U.S. actions will mean little, however, if developing nations, particularly China, don't also move to curb their emissions. China (9.9 billion metric tons in 2012) passed the U.S. in 2006 as the world's top emitter of CO2 and continues to build coal plants at an alarming rate At the U.N. this fall, nations are supposed to offer a mix of commitments to cut carbon pollution and provide funds to help poor nations cope with climate change. That's to be followed by a summit in Lima, Peru, to draft a final treaty and a signing ceremony next year in Paris. If the latest U.N. report prods policymakers to reach a deal after years of inconclusive talks, it will have served an important purpose. All is not lost. Even if world leaders manage to agree on new emission limits, the treaty wouldn't kick in until 2020, and a certain amount of warming is already "baked in" for decades to come. That makes adapting to a warmer world an important part of the response, and here the outlook is less gloomy than the scary predictions suggest. Humans, it turns out, are pretty good at adapting to changing circumstances. People already know how to build dikes and seawalls. Technology can help identify threats. Research and development might produce cleaner energy to replace fossil fuels. Geo-engineering might be able to trim the amount of warming. Advances in agriculture can protect crop yields. Sophisticated risk management practices can be applied to a changing climate.

Ocean remote sensing critical to understand weather climate patterns that will enable civilizations to adapt to climate change or face extinction

NASA Science, no date, NASA Oceanography, http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/

Part of NASA's mission is to develop an understanding of the total Earth system and the effects of natural and human-induced changes on the global environment. Our oceans play a major role in influencing changes in the world's climate and weather. Collecting and analyzing long-term ocean data from satellites is a relatively new field of exploration. The analysis of remotely-sensed ocean data makes it possible to understand the ocean in new and exciting ways. Prior to satellite data, most of what we have learned about the oceans had come from infrequent measurements collected from ships, buoys, and drifters. Ship-based oceanographers are limited to sampling the ocean in a relatively small area with often a great deal of difficulty. Data from ships, buoys, and drifters are not sufficient to characterize the conditions of the spatially diverse of the ocean. The advent of ocean-observing satellites has launched a new era of marine discovery. Remotely sensed satellite data and modeling techniques enable the global mapping of seasonal changes in ocean surface topography, currents, waves, winds, phytoplankton content, sea-ice extent, rainfall, sunlight reaching the sea, and sea surface temperature. Studying these patterns at a global scale help forecast and mitigate the disastrous effects of floods and drought. Images generated by ocean observing satellite missions tell us volumes about the most fundamental climate changes. During the last decade, forecasting models have benefited from satellite data as they have improved the ability to predict events such as El Nio and other global and regional climate cycles. These models will become more sophisticated as scientists and forecasters further develop the ability to simulate certain ocean phenomena and thus better predict when they will occur. Using remote sensing data and computer models, scientists can now investigate how the oceans affect the evolution of weather, hurricanes, and climate. Oceans control the Earth's weather as they heat and cool, humidify and dry the air and control wind speed and direction. And the weather determines not just what you'll wear to work in the week ahead--but also whether the wheat crop in Nebraska will get enough rain to mature, whether the snow pack in the Sierras will be thick enough to water southern California, whether the hurricane season in the Atlantic will be mellow or brutal, whether eastern Pacific fisheries will be decimated by El Nio. Long-term weather patterns influence water supply, food supply, trade shipments, and property values. They can even foster the growth of civilizations, or kill them off. You can't escape the weather, or even change it--but being able to predict its caprice makes its impact manageable. And only by understanding the dynamics of the oceans can we begin to do this.

A better understanding of climate change is necessary to adaptation

EMU Stat, no date, http://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/AboutUs/WhatWeDo/MonitoringClimate/index.htmlA better understanding of climate change and its impact is necessary for governments and decision makers to define and implement appropriate mitigation and adaptation policies, including investment policies for large infrastructure with long lifecycles. This requires the development of science-based climate services, in synergy with weather services, within the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFSC) recently established by the World Meteorological Organisation. Climate services are based on the combination of long series of well calibrated observations, numerical models capable of delivering climate prediction at seasonal to decadal scales and projections at longer scales (in response to emission scenarios), and socio-economic data. The related requirements for observations of Essential Climate Variables (ECV) are established and maintained by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) programme. With more than 30 years of consistent data, meteorological satellites are an invaluable asset for climate monitoring and understanding of our changing climate, and their role will grow increasingly important with the next generations of systems. However, exploiting this potential requires dedicated international efforts for recalibrating and reprocessing data, extracting climate records, and making them available to downstream applications and scientists. Each instrument or satellite has its own characteristic such as sensitivity to Earth signals, evolution of performance over time, or orbit stability. In addition, calibration and processing algorithms are continuously improved over the course of a mission. Therefore, a simple concatenation of data in time would show jumps when a satellite is changed or artificial trends for some satellites in a series, and would not be useful for climate analysis. The figure at left shows the differences (in Kelvin) between clear sky infrared Brightness Temperatures from successive Meteosat satellites and those calculated from night-time radiosonde data available each month. Re-calibration and cross-calibration are an essential prerequisite to arrive at homogenous time series of measurements across successive satellites that are useable for climate studies. After re-calibration and cross-calibration it is possible and necessary to reprocess data into basic physical measurements (radiances, reflectances, etc.) to produce long series known as Fundamental Climate Data Records. These FCDRs form the raw material for climate analyses, from which geophysical parameters, in particular Essential Climate Variables, can be reprocessed to form Thematic Climate Data Records (TCDRs), which can then be validated against independent climate data. These climate records can then be used directly, or assimilated into the best available numerical prediction models used in 'reanalysis' mode to produce consistent climate records of a broader range of variables.Ocean science research critical to effective climate change adaptation

Sea Technology, January 2013, The National Ocean Policy Fosters Collaboration for Healthier Oceans, Mineta, Norman Y. Co-Chair, Joint Ocean Commission Initiative; Vice Chair, Hill & Knowlton Inc.; Former U.S. Transportation, Commerce Secretary, p. 54

The Policy The National Ocean Policy calls for management of our oceans to be grounded in stakeholder input and improved interagency coordination for better use of public resources, strengthening of the economy, improving ocean health and reinvigorating coastal communities. Strong science and research are critical to advance our understanding of the oceans' role in major public policy challenges, including climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, evaluating and preparing for renewable energy opportunities in coastal waters, and contributing to the science and technology base that is central to the nation's economy. US must invest in satellite data to monitor climate change

James Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfIf we accept that climate change poses serious risks to regional stability, national security, and economic health, the United States needs to reconsider its funding priorities for civil space. Earth observation is crucial for national security and the economy; manned spaceflight programs pro- vide prestige. The United States must make climate-monitoring satellites its priority for fundingif it is serious about managing climate change. In practical terms, this means a reduction in the spending on human spaceflight in order to fund a sustained program of satellite-building to create a robust climate monitoring space system. This is, of course, not an all-or-nothing issue. The United States can fund a range of space programs, manned and unmanned, for exploration and for Earth sciences. It is a question of priorities. Our recommendation is that the funding given to Earth observation should increase, as it is more important now for the national interest to monitor and manage climate change, even if that means a slower pace for other programs, such as manned spaceflight, until a robust Earth observation system has been put in orbit.Enhanced data collection critical to US global influence on climate changeJames Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfHaving the right data is only part of the challenge. The usefulness of that data depends on the strength of climate models and computing capabilities and our ability to make this information available to decision-makers and user communities in a useful form. In the United States, these functions could be provided by a strengthened and reorganized interagency climate informa-tion structure bolstered by the creation of a National Climate Service, which could aggregate and analyze climate data in ways tailored to support management, policymaking, and the information needs of a broad-based user community. There is also an opportunity for the United States to lead an international effort that takes the many existing collaboration structuressuch as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and the Global Climate Observation System (GCOS)and operationalizes them. The Global Framework for Climate Services being advocated by the World Meteorological Organization could provide the platform to make climate data more accessible to policymakers. The United States is the nation that is most active in space and the nation with the greatest need to demonstrate responsible leadership. A willingness to cooperate and share will help build Americas global influence. Operationalizing science to manage climate change, building the capacity to acquire the needed information and share it with a wide range of users, and bolstering these capabilities at the international level as a part of a productive engagement strategy in what has so far been a contentious road to international agreement should all be goals for the United States both to address climate change, contribute to solving a global problem, and rebuild U.S. leadership. To this end, our recommendations are as follows: The U.S. approach to climate change policy should be shaped by the need to inform decision makers and planners in both government and the private sector by providing understandable metrics and analyses of the effectiveness of and compliance with mitigation programs and adaption plans. The customers for this should include federal agencies, state and local governments, private sector users, and other nations. To better serve the national interest, the United States should increase its Earth observation capabilitiesespecially space-based sensors for carbon monitoringto improve our ability to understand the carbon cycle and to inform any future international agreement. This means that until these capabilities are adequate for monitoring climate change, investment in Earth ob- servation satellites should take precedence over other space programs. Increased spending on Earth observation satellites specifically designed for climate change should be maintained until the current capability shortfall is eliminated. The United States should accelerate the creation of a National Climate Service to improve climate information management and decision-making. In a related effort, the United States should support the World Meteorological Organization in its efforts to create a World Climate Service for similar reasons. The United States should complement its national effort by supporting and expanding multi- lateral efforts to coordinate Earth observation for climate change, building on existing international efforts such as the GCOS. This could entail coordinated investment in space and subsidies for ground facilities in developing countries, recognizing that the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Canada will bear the largest share of the cost at this time.

Contention II Smart Power

Building a knowledge infrastructure to address climate change is critical to developing US smart power

John Hamre, President & CEO of CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfThe 2008 CSIS report, CSIS Commission on Smart Power: A Smarter, More Secure America, called for the United States to find ways for investing in the global good. The report highlighted five critical areas for engagement, including technology and innovation. It singled out climate change as an issue that required American leadership to help establish global consensus and develop innovative solutions to manage a new and complex global challenge. Climate change is a global challenge, but it is also an opportunity for the United States to build its global leadership. Now is the time for the current administration to build up the knowledge infrastructure for climate change. It will clearly take a team effort to coordinate resources, streamline decision-making, and disseminate information, perhaps as part of a new National Climate Service, to start now to build this critical knowledge infrastructure. Without the knowledge this infrastructure would establish and a realistic process to manage it, we will be sailing in uncharted waters with rumored and uncertain landmarks.

Smart power critical to prevent Iranian nuclearization

Lanny Davis, April 11, 2014, Davis served as special counsel to former President Clinton and is principal in the Washington D.C. law firm of Lanny J. Davis & Associates, and is Executive Vice President of the strategic communications firm, Levick, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lanny-davis/smart-power-us-strategy-f_b_5120137.html

By the turn of the 21st century, it was clear that a new approach to the use of American power to protect our national interests and values was necessary.At the risk of some over-simplification, by the end of former President George W. Bush's second term, essentially two lines of thinking had emerged. On the right was a preference for the use of "hard power" -- the use of military force and intervention to protect U.S. interests. On the left was a growing bias against military intervention of any kind and in favor of "soft power" -- economic aid and incentives on human rights and democracy. And recently, we have seen the libertarian right, led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), appearing almost always to oppose both hard military power and soft power of foreign aid and economic development.Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in partnership with her boss, President Obama, came up with a mix of hard and soft, calling it "smart power," with the appropriate mix between the two driven by specific facts and circumstances."The president-elect and I believe that foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology," she said at her January 2009 confirmation hearings. "We must use what has been called 'smart power,' the full range of tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural -- picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of our foreign policy."In a recent op-ed, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton wrote about Clinton's tough words and attitude concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions -- calling him a "KGB agent," defined as someone who "doesn't have a soul." Shelton also reminded us of Clinton's use of effective diplomacy with Putin, identifying common interests with an adversary -- incenting Russia to agree to new United Nations sanctions on Iran, as well as cooperation on anti-terrorist efforts, including reaching a historic "lethal transit" agreement, which allowed U.S. military planes to transport lethal materials over Russia to Afghanistan.Or take Clinton's leadership in supporting and helping the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control to implement tough economic sanctions against Iran. These policies constitute a good example of "smart power" in attempting to deter Iran's development of a nuclear weapon while not eliminating a military option."I voted for every sanction that came down the pipe against Iran," she said recently in a speech to the American Jewish Congress, referring to her years as a senator. "We went after Iran's oil industry, banks and weapons programs. We enlisted insurance firms, shipping lines, energy companies, financial institutions, and others to cut Iran off."Thanks in large part to her and Obama's leadership, the European Union, the U.N., and nations around the globe joined in to make the U.S.-initiated sanctions regime effective. National Public Radio reported that "there's widespread agreement that sanctions have worked [against Iran], squeezing Iran financially and bringing its leaders to the negotiating table. Iran's economy is, by any measure, in terrible shape." Says Barbara Slavin, an Iran analyst for the Atlantic Council, in the piece, "The cost of living has gone up so fast for Iranians that they are absolutely stunned, and people are simply not able to maintain the middle-class lifestyles they are used to."While Clinton has supported the Obama administration's efforts to negotiate a pullback from Iran's effort to develop a nuclear weapon, she said in a recent speech that she remains "skeptical that the Iranians would follow through and deliver. I have seen their behavior over the years. But this is a development that is worth testing.""We want to give space for diplomacy to work," she said (soft power). "If it does not, then we can always and we will, put on additional sanctions ... and yes, we will explore every other option. And let's be clear, every other option does remain on the table." (hard power).In short, soft + hard = smart, and it could be one of Clinton's most enduring doctrines and legacies of her leadership at the State Department in the early years of the 21st century.

Iranian nuclear proliferation causes a wave of fast prolif in the Middle East, risking regional war and nuclear terrorismNoah Feldman, Senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, October 27, 2006 [New York Times, Nuclear Holocaust: A Risk Too Big Even for Martyrs?]The anti-Israel statements of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, coupled with Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas, might lead you to think that the Arab states would welcome Iran's nuclear program. After all, the call to wipe the Zionist regime from the map is a longstanding clich of Arab nationalist rhetoric. But the interests of Shiite non-Arab Iran do not always coincide with those of Arab leaders. A nuclear Iran means, at the very least, a realignment of power dynamics in the Persian Gulf. It could potentially mean much more: a historic shift in the position of the long-subordinated Shiite minority relative to the power and prestige of the Sunni majority, which traditionally dominated the Muslim world. Many Arab Sunnis fear that the moment is ripe for a Shiite rise. Iraq's Shiite majority has been asserting the right to govern, and the lesson has not been lost on the Shiite majority in Bahrain and the large minorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah of Jordan has warned of a "Shiite crescent" of power stretching from Iran to Lebanon via Iraq and (by proxy) Syria.But geopolitics is not the only reason Sunni Arab leaders are rattled by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. They also seem to be worried that the Iranians might actually use nuclear weapons if they get them. A nuclear attack on Israel would engulf the whole region. But that is not the only danger: Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere fear that the Iranians might just use a nuclear bomb against them. Even as Iran's defiance of the United States and Israel wins support among some Sunnis, extremist Sunnis have been engaging in the act of takfir, condemning all Shiites as infidels. On the ground in Iraq, Sunni takfiris are putting this theory into practice, aiming at Shiite civilians and killing them indiscriminately. Shiite militias have been responding in kind, and massacres of Sunni civilians are no longer isolated events.Adding the nuclear ingredient to this volatile mix will certainly produce an arms race. If Iran is going to get the bomb, its neighbors will have no choice but to keep up. North Korea, now protected by its own bomb, has threatened proliferation - and in the Middle East it would find a number of willing buyers. Small principalities with huge U.S. Air Force bases, like Qatar, might choose to rely on an American protective umbrella. But Saudi Arabia, which has always seen Iran as a threatening competitor, will not be willing to place its nuclear security entirely in American hands. Once the Saudis are in the hunt, Egypt will need nuclear weapons to keep it from becoming irrelevant to the regional power balance - and sure enough, last month Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak's son and Egypt's heir apparent, very publicly announced that Egypt should pursue a nuclear program.Given the increasing instability of the Middle East, nuclear proliferation there is more worrisome than almost anywhere else on earth. As nuclear technology spreads, terrorists will enjoy increasing odds of getting their hands on nuclear weapons. States - including North Korea - might sell bombs or give them to favored proxy allies, the way Iran gave Hezbollah medium-range rockets that Hezbollah used this summer during its war with Israel. Bombing through an intermediary has its advantages: deniability is, after all, the name of the game for a government trying to avoid nuclear retaliation.Proliferation could also happen in other ways. Imagine a succession crisis in which the Saudi government fragments and control over nuclear weapons, should the Saudis have acquired them, falls into the hands of Saudi elites who are sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, or at least to his ideas. Or Al Qaeda itself could purchase ready-made bombs, a feat technically much less difficult than designing nuclear weapons from scratch. So far, there are few nuclear powers from whom such bombs can be directly bought: as of today, only nine nations in the world belong to the nuclear club. But as more countries get the bomb, tracing the seller will become harder and harder, and the incentive to make a sale will increase.

U.S. Iran war engulfs the Middle East spilling over causing extinctionHarding 12 (O. Harding, MEd. in Psychology from Mount Saint Vincent University) (War With Iran A Possible Scenario, 9-25-12 http://voices.yahoo.com/war-iran-possible-scenario-11785806.html?cat=9)

The attack on Iran will be quick, ferocious and crippling. The attacks will come wave after wave and from multiple directions. Attacks will be conducted from the air as well as from the sea and probably from land as Special Forces already in Iran, perform their planned roles. American and NATO war planes will totally destroy all the nuclear facilities. They will destroy their surface to air missiles, short and long range missile sites, military planes, air fields, radar communications. Tomahawk missiles fired from submarines and ships in the Gulf will help level every military establishment in the country. The Iranians will be completely overwhelmed. There will be panic and confusion in the military.We will see the F22 Raptor fighter plane in action for the first. Other technologies will be tested. The U.S will have a chance to see how well its missile defense shield works in a real war situation. America and its allies will not stop at the destruction of the nuclear sites; they will set out to change the balance of power in the Middle East.In the event of an attack, Iran may attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. Their ships and submarines will be quickly eliminated. They will end with no pride left. The government of Iran will be forced to accept whatever terms the international community enforces on them.The paltry response that Iran will be able to muster will not be enough to hurt Israel or the attacking force. Hezbollah will attack Israel and they will be dealt with decisively this time around. Iran having been knocked out militarily, Syria in the throes of a civil war, Hezbollah will be on its own, their source of supplies being cut off. Hezbollah will suffer a fatal blow to their military machinery by the Israelis.The Allied forces will not make the same mistake this time as they did inIraqand Afghanistan. This will not be a protracted war but it will be very effective militarily.Objection to the military strike will be strong in some places. However, many of the Arab nations will be in favor of the strike. To keep dissent to a minimum, the allies will have to ensure that civilian deaths are at a minimum, that Israel does not participate, that the war ends quickly and that Iran is not occupied.This could be a time of great instability for the Middle East. A critical diplomatic balance would have to be pursued to set the stage for a return to relative peace in that region.

Topicality Ocean Exploration

Earth observation satellites engage in ocean exploration

NASA Science, no date, Ocean Exploration, http://science1.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/ocean-exploration/Ocean Exploration

As defined by the President's Panel on Ocean Exploration (NOAA, 2000), exploration is discovery through disciplined, diverse observations and the recording of findings. Exploration is an early component of the research process; it focuses on new areas of inquiry and develops descriptions of phenomena that inform the direction of further study. NASA is the exploration agency of the Federal Government. NASA Earth observing satellites often open up new vistas for earth science research. All are meant to explore the envelope of what is known and understood about the physical, chemical and biological processes of the planet.No suite of NASA Earth Science missions more exemplify the spirit of exploration than the Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) missions. These missions generally try to measure a geophysical parameter that has been poorly sampled or unattainable from in situ platforms and bring to bear new cutting-edge technology to address the problem. Two NASA ESSP missions address ocean exploration right now. First, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) currently on orbit is exploring hitherto undetectable variations in the mass field of the ocean - important for climate and ocean circulation studies. Second, the Aquarius mission to be launched in 2008 will explore the salinity of the ocean from space. Historically, salinity measurements have been difficult to make in situ and so our knowledge of the spatial and temporal variability of ocean salinity is quite poor. Using microwave remote-sensing technology Aquarius will "reveal" for the first time the detailed patterns of salinity at the surface of the ocean. Ocean surface salinity is known to be an important, but poorly understood factor withinthe climate system. NASA supports the research and preparation of explorers for all its missions. For the ocean, the basic research programs in physical and biological oceanography support the background developments needed to launch new explorations of the ocean (from space). Previous NASA explorations of the ocean have lead to knowledge and technology that is now used widely in research and application (ocean surface togography topography as measured by precision altimeters, ocean vector winds as measured by scatterometers, and ocean color as measured by radiometers are three excellent examples where NASA initiated the field through is exploration initiative).

FYI How Ocean Satellite Monitoring OccursHow the ocean is monitored by satellites

NOAA, no date, How NOAA Monitors the Climate, http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/climate.html

NOAA incorporates a broad spectrum of state-of-the-art measurements, including those from on site and satellite systems, to accomplish its climate goals. On site surface observing networks measure variables such as air temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, snowfall, snow depth, humidity, winds, and air pressure on every continent. Although NOAA networks such as the Cooperative Observers Network and Automated Surface Observing System were not designed specifically to monitor the Earths climate, NOAA recognized the need to develop networks with a specific focus on climate observations. The worlds oceans are monitored by thousands of ships, buoys, and floats. There are nearly 3,000 drifting floats in the Argo array that measure not only conditions at the ocean interface, but also below the surface to record profiles of temperature, salinity, and current. Balloons and satellites are critical to providing NOAAs atmospheric and large-area observations. Balloon-borne radiosondes and radar measure variables including temperature, precipitation, winds, humidity, and pressure from the surface to heights more than 10 miles above the Earths surface. Satellite observing systems observe weather systems for weather forecasting purposes, but they are also critical for monitoring climate by providing consistent and continuous coverage of regional and global areas. Geostationary and polar orbiting satellites enhance on site measurements by observing unique variables and by extending coverage to areas not measured with sensors on location. They routinely capture information such as sea ice extent, glacier melting rates, sea level height and winds, global cloudiness, wildfires and vegetation health.

Solvency Satellite SolvencySatellites critical to ocean climate monitoring

European Space Agency, February 7, 2014, Space for our Climate, http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Space_for_our_climate/Is_global_warming_hiding_underwaterLike flying thermometers, some satellites carry instruments that provide a global view of the surface temperature of oceans and seas. Measuring the sea-surface temperature is important for improving weather and ocean forecasting and climate change research.

Solvency General Adaptation

Adaptation solves its feasible and it saves money in in the long run.Schwartz, consultant and an National Academy of Engineering member, in 10 | Jr, Henry G. Adaptation to the Impacts of Climate Change on Transportation, The Bridge, Fall|

Interactions and relationships among geographical regions and social sectors cannot be ignored. Drought in the Southwest and/or increases in water and air temperatures may reduce the efficiencies of power plants, just when more power is needed for air conditioning. Intense storms and floods can impact commerce, as they did following Katrina and the great floods of 1993 on the upper Mississippi River. Conflicts inevitably arise between the needs of people and the needs of the ecosystem in which they live, and adaptation measures to manage the risks of climate change must incorporate sound sustainability principles. If we plan and act responsibly, we may be able to have our cake and eat it too. Sound Solutions for the 21st Century Transportation System We must not use the uncertainties and challenges of adapting to climate change as an excuse for inaction. The challenge to the engineering profession is to take into account the inherent uncertainties of climate science, as well as complex technological, social, economic, and environmental interrelationships, and develop sound solutions for transportation systems that will serve us until the end of the century. A large body of work has been done on making decisions on issues that include great uncertainties. Scenario analyses, for example, can provide envelopes of possible outcomes(e.g., best case/worst case scenarios and respective probabilities).To many, climate change is a distant worry, but developers of transportation systems work on a time horizon of 50 to 100 years for new and rehabilitated facilities. Thus they have no choice but to take into account the impacts of climate change. The marginal costs of accommodating climate change impacts in major systems will be dwarfed by the cost of retrofitting systems to meet these same needs decades hence. To engineers, many of the solutions for adaptation are fairly obviousbuild robust, resilient systems, protect or move existing assets, and, when necessary, abandon indefensible facilities. Some adaptations to climate change are listed below: Sea Level Rise Build or enhance levees and dikes to resist higher sea levels and storm surges. Elevate critical infrastructure. Abandon or relocate coastal highways, rail lines, and bridges. Provide good evacuation routes and operational plans. Provide federal incentives to reduce the amount of development in at-risk coastal regions. Heat Waves Support research on new, more heat-resistant materials for paving and bridge decks. Replace and/or reconstruct highway and bridge expansion joints. Increase the length of airport runways to compensate for lower air densities. Revisit standards for construction workers exposed to high temperatures. Increased Storm Intensity Revise hydrologic storm and flood frequency maps. Develop new design standards for hydraulic structures. Reinforce at-risk structures, particularly to protect against scouring of bridge piers. Encourage better land-use planning for flood plains. Stronger Hurricanes Move critical infrastructure inland. Reinforce and/or build more robust, resilient structures. Design for greater storm surges. Strengthen and elevate port facilities.Arctic Warming Identify areas and infrastructure that will be damaged by thawing permafrost. Develop new approaches to foundation design. Reinforce, protect, or move seaside villages. Conclusions. We can continue to debate the validity of climate science,but waiting for decades or longer for final proof would be foolhardy at best. Fifty or 100 years from nowthe impact of increasing emissions of GHGs will be firmly established. If the projections of todays climate scientists are correct and we have failed to take both mitigating and adaptive actions, then much damage will already have been done. The potential impacts of climate change on the built environment and the implications for transportation infrastructure are sufficiently well defined for us to take action now. If this generation of engineers fails to act, coastal highways and railroads will be under water, bridges will be unusable, tunnels will be periodically flooded, communities in the Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast will be threatened by river flooding, people inthe Southwest will face increasing water shortages, and entire villages along the North Slope of Alaska will be swallowed by the sea. However, if we incorporate climate change into the regular planning processes for transportation and other infrastructure, the marginal costs of building more robust, resilient systems can be readily accommodated. And we will have met our obligations to future generations.

Solvency Information Critical to AdaptationAdaptation critical to avoid the impacts of climate change. Improved information is necessary to solve.

John Hamre, President & CEO of CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfAs we develop new policies, we are confronted with critical questions of capacity and responsibility for this endeavor. The scientific community has done a great deal to study the nature and pace of global climate change and increase our understanding of these global phenomenaboth in terms of what we know and what we do not know. Now, as policymakers, businesses, the inter- national community, and households consider ways to reduce emissions in the hope of avoiding the most severe effects of a changing climate, build more resilient infrastructure and systems to withstand the unavoidable impacts of climate change, and plan for dealing with climate-related disasters, our ability to provide decision-makers with the information that they need must grow and improve.Among many complex issues, we need to understand climate-related trends as they apply to state and local communities; we must decide how to monitor emissions and check results against agreed-upon reductions and expected outcomes; we must address how to better model the economic effects of emissions reductions plans and a changing natural environment in ways that will help us understand the impact of new climate policies. We need to establish methods of assessing the relative costs and benefits of more aggressive action that will allow us to prioritize actions to take for climate change, and, of course, we need to continuously improve on understanding how and why the Earths climate is changing so as to build greater certainty into policy efforts. This is a daunting task for government, which must manage information on an unprecedented scale. Federal agencies will have to translate vast quantities of scientific data into knowledge that can guide policymakers and administrators. Currently, the federal government is generating enormous amounts of data and analysis on the Earths climate, on ocean temperatures and currents,on jet streams and Arctic ice melt. Over time, our ability to monitor emissions and understand important feedbacks, including societal adjustments to the policies in place as well as a changing climate, will need to improve and expand. The government does have an excellent starting point with the work of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Earth observation functions supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NOAA has made tremendous efforts, working with foreign partners to create the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). This network seeks to provide global, real-time data in an open, collaborative, and transparent way. But the implementation of GEOSS has not progressed much beyond developing a blueprint for the system.1Essential data to solve climate change is missing, enhanced satellite data is key

James Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfUntil this year, Americas civil space policiesand the budgets that derive from itwere shaped to a considerable degree by the political imperatives of the past and by the romantic fiction of space- flight. We believe there is a new imperativeclimate changethat should take precedence in our national plans for space and that the goal for space spending in the next decade should be to create a robust and adequate Earth observation architecture. There is unequivocal evidence, despite careless mistakes and noisy protests, that Earths climate is warming. While the effects and implications of this are subject to speculation, there should be no doubt that the world faces a major challenge. There are important shortfalls in data and analysis needed to manage this challenge. Inadequate data mean that we cannot determine the scope or nature of change in some key areas, such as the melting of Antarctic sea ice. Long-term changes in daily temperature are not adequately understood, in part because of limited observations of atmospheric changes. Our understanding of how some anthropogenic (man-made) influences affect climate change is still incomplete. These shortfalls must be remedied, if only to overcome skepticism and doubt. Climate change now occupies a central place on the global political agenda, and the United States should adjust its space policies to reflect this. Assessing and managing climate change will require taking what has largely been a scientific enterprise and operationalizing it. Operationalization means creating processes to provide the data and analysis that governments will need if they are to implement policies and regulations to soften the effects of climate change. Operationalization requires the right kind of data and adequate tools for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating that data in ways that inform decision-making at many levels of society. Satellites play a central role in assessing climate change because they can provide a consistent global view, important data, and an understanding of change in important but remote areas. Yet there are relatively few climate satellitesa total of 19, many of which are well past their expected service life. Accidents or failures would expose the fragility of the Earth observation system. We lack the required sensors and instruments for the kinds of measurement that would make predictions more accurate and solutions more acceptable. Weather satellites, which take low-resolution pictures of clouds, forests, and ice caps, are not adequate to the task. NASA builds impressive Earth observation satellites for climate change, but these have been experimental rather than on- going programs. Climate change poses a dilemma for space policy. The programs needed to manage climate change have been woefully underfunded for decades. The normal practice is to call uncritically for more money for civil space and its three componentsplanetary exploration, Earth observation, and manned spaceflight. In fact, civil space has been lavishly funded. Since 1989, NASA has received $385 billion, with $189 billion in the last decade. This is more than the space budgetsof most other nations combined. The problem is not a lack of money but how it has been spent. The bulk of this money went to NASAs manned space program. This is a legacy of the Cold War. Manned spaceflight showed that market democracies could surpass scientific socialism. The point has been made. Spaceflight provides prestige, but a long series of miscalculations have left the United States with a fragile and fabulously expensive space transportation system. It will take years to recover, and some goals, such as a voyage to Mars, are simply unachievable absent major breakthroughs in physics and other sciences.

Data is essential to an effective climate change policyJames Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfOn a national level, the United States is beginning a similar effort to better inform decisionmakers about climate change. U.S. climate change policy is based on three components: slowing the growth of emissions; strengthening science, technology, and institutions; and enhancing international cooperation. Climate change has been a priority for the Obama administration, and it now needs to be reinforced by organizational measures that, like the World Climate Service System, provide essential information to decisionmakers. Effective climate change policy requires the government to provide the user community with information on anticipated climate changes and the potential effect of any policies. Federal government, states, local communities, businesses, and individuals all require information to make decisions about how to respond to climate change.

US should prioritize satellite climate change policyJames Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfClimate change poses a dilemma for space policy. If we accept that climate change poses cred-ible and major risks to regional stability, national security, and economic health, the United States needs to reconsider how it spends its money for civil space. Earth observation data are critical to understanding the causes and effects of climate change and quantifying changing conditions in the environment. The shortage of satellites actually designed and in orbit to measure climate change is unacceptable if we are serious about climate change. Until this year, U.S. space policy was on autopilot. The Bush space policy did not differ markedly from the space policy of Jimmy Carter. The hallmark of this period was heavy investment in the shuttle and space station. The commitment to these 1970s technologies eroded public interest in space. A science reporter for a national newspaper said that when he wrote on the unmanned Mars explorers, thousands of readers would look at the story on the newspapers Web site, but when he wrote about the shuttle, there would be only a few hundred hits. The overlong commitment to the shuttle and the station ended in final years of the Bush administration, but unfortunately it was replaced with an unworkable vision for manned exploration that would have consumed a major portion of the space budget. In fact, a mission to Marsis beyond the technical capabilities of any nation. Leonardo da Vinci could draw helicopters and aircraft, but they were made of wood and cloth. Until breakthroughs in materials, chemistry, and physics, his ideas could not be implemented. The same is now true for manned planetary exploration. Our propulsion and life support systems will not support a manned flight to Mars. In contrast, a return to the Moon is achievable. The dilemma is that NASA would need an- other $150 billion to return to the moon more than 40 years after the first visit. There is no doubt that a return to the moon would bring prestige to the United States and that if another nation such as China was to get there beforehand it will be interpreted as another sign of U.S. decline. Years of a static approach to space policy have put us in this uncomfortable situation. From the perspective of the national interest, however, the United States would be better served by building and maintaining a robust space capacity for monitoring climate change. This is a question of priorities. Manned flight should remain a priority, but not the first priority. Earth observation data is critical to understanding the causes and effects of climate change and quantifying changing conditions in the environment. The paucity of satellites actually designed and in orbit to measure climate change is disturbing. The United States does not have a robust climate-monitoring infrastructure. In fact, the current infrastructure is in decline. Until that de- cline is reversed and an adequate space infrastructure put in place, building and launching satellites specifically designed for monitoring climate change should be the first priority for civil space spending. Manned spaceflight provides prestige, but Earth observation is crucial for security and economic well-being. The United States should continue to fund as a priority a more robust and adequate space infrastructure to measure climate change, building and orbiting satellites specifically designed to carry advanced sensors for such monitoring. Satellites provide globally consistent observations and the means to make simultaneous observations of diverse measurements that are essential for climate studies. They supply high-accuracy global observations of the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface that cannot be acquired by any other method. Satellite instruments supply accurate measurements on a near-daily basis for long periods and across broad geographic regions. They can reveal global patterns that ground or air sensors would be unable to detectas in the case of data from NASA satellites that showed us the amount of pollution arriving in North America from Asia as equal to 15 percent of local emissions of the United States and Canada. This sort of data is crucial to effective management of emissionsthe United States, for example, could put in place regulations to decrease emissions and find them neutralized by pollution from other regions. Satellites allow us to monitor the pattern of ice-sheet thickening and thinning. While Arctic ice once increased a few centimeters every year, it now melts at a rate of more than one meter annually. This knowledge would not exist without satellite laser altimetry from NASAs ICESat satellite. Satellite observations serve an indispensable rolethey have provided unprecedented knowledge of inaccessible regions. Of the 44 essential climate variables (ECV) recognized as necessary to support the needs of the parties to the UNFCCC for the purposes of the Convention, 26 depend on satellite observations. But deployments of new and replacement satellites have not kept pace with the termination of older systems. Innovation and investment in Earth observation technology have failed to keep pace with global needs for monitoring and verification. Much of our data comes from satellites put in orbit for other purposes, such as weather prediction and monitoring. The sensors on these weather satellites provide valuable data, but they are not optimized for moni- toring climate change or for adequately assessing the effect of mitigation efforts. More precise and specialized data are needed to understand and predict climate change, and getting these data will require new orbital sensors. Countries have improved many of their climate observation capabilities, but reports suggest little progress in ensuring long-term continuity for several important observing systems. The bulk of climate data is collected by the United States, and NASAs investment in the Earth Observing System missions has provided the climate-quality data used to establish trends in sea level, ozone concentrations, ocean color, solar irradiance, Earths energy balance, and other key variables. While this investment has made an invaluable contribution, it is not an operational system. Many satellites currently in orbit are operating well past their planned lifetimes. In the next eight years, half of the worlds Earth observation satellites will be past their useful life. One reason for this is that many of the satellites that provide critical data for monitoring climate change are experimental satellites (such as TRMMthe Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission). Satellites built as research efforts provide real benefit, but if they are not replaced when their service life ends and if a permanent operational capability for Earth observation is not put in place, we will face insurmountable problems for observing capabilities and our ability to manage climate change. Many missions and observations for collecting climate data are at risk of interruption. These include measurements of ocean color that are critical for studying phytoplankton bloom and the role of ocean biomass as a carbon source and sink and data on the role of forests in the carbon cycle. Perhaps the most important shortcoming involves the monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and greenhouse gases. Reduction and regulation of CO2emissions are part of every discussion on how to manage climate change, but the crash of NASAs Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite left the world essentially bereft of the ability to make precise measurements to assess emissions reduction efforts. OCO cost approximately $278 million, which was about 2 percent of NASAs annual budget for manned space flight in 2009. Its loss will cripple global car- bon monitoring until we have its replacement, finally funded this year and scheduled for launch no later than February 2013. Existing GHG monitoring networks and programs are predominantly ground-based, butthey are not truly adequate to the task. Ground-based networks are limited because they can only provide disjointed pieces of a larger picture. Moreover, these systems are aging, and investment for replacement has declined. We now rely on Japans GOSAT, the European Space Agencys SCIAMACHY sensor, and Canadas microsatellite, CanX-2, for observations of atmospheric concentrations of carbon; however, these sensors are not advanced enough to meet data requirements needed to understand critical aspects of the carbon cycle, and they are highly constrained by their range of coverage. For example, the carbon produced from a fossil fuel power plant is too small to measure with GOSAT, and low spatial resolution and high uncertainty of measurements limit the monitoring capabilities of SCIAMACHY. The implications are serious for measuring the effectiveness of climate policies. If reduction in GHG emissions (the most significant being carbon dioxide) is the centerpiece of mitigation efforts and a goal for both national legislation and international agreement, we are woefully unprepared to assess the effectiveness of these measures. It will be The need for information has never been greater, but there are significant gaps in globalEarth monitoring capabilities. Although more than 50 nations operate or plan to operate Earth observation satellites, most of these are basic electro-optical satellites, essentially orbiting digital cameras that lack the necessary sensors for precise climate monitoring. There are only a handful of dedicated satellites for monitoring climate change, and the time has passed when general-purpose weather satellites can meet our informational needs. Japan, Europe, and the United States operate satellites with some of the sensors needed to monitor climate change, but a recent National Academies study found that of the 26 essential climate variables that can be monitored from space, we have coverage of only 16. Only a coordinated federal policy and investment, including revised priorities for our civil space programs, can change this. For most of the last decade, NASA was unable to replace its climate-monitoring satellites. Re- placing these satellites is crucial to avoid a drastic decline in collecting the most valuable information for monitoring climate change. The Obama administration has proposed a budget for NASAs Earth science programs of $2.4 billion in new funding over the next five years, an increase of more than 60 percent. The new funding, which requires congressional approval, will help replace OCO and allow NASA to replace the twin GRACE satellites that make detailed measurements of Earths gravity field that can provide important climate data. The request for NOAAs budget for climate-related activities has been increased as well. NOAA will be spending $2.2 billion to maintain and further develop satellites and to support climate difficult to assess and adjust CO-reducing research; $435 million has been requested to support the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with $77 million in new increases for core climate services and observations. Spending on space has always been a question of priorities. Until recently, those priorities were frozen in time, reflecting political needs that were decades out of date. Our national priorities have changed. A new priority, reflecting the new challenges to our security and national interest, involves monitoring and understanding climate change. Debate over climate change is fierce and there are many skeptics, but the signs of major changes are undeniable. Warnings of catastrophe are likely overblown, but we do not fully understand the implications of climate change or the utility of various measures to mitigate it. Climate change is occurring, and it creates new risks. In this context, the recent decision to scale back spending on human space flight and increase spending on Earth observation is a better match for national priorities and interests. It updates a space policy that has been badly out of date for years. Observation of climate change began more than a century ago with simple measurementsof the Earths average temperature. These were interesting, but inadequate. The breakthrough in understanding climate change came with Earth observation satellites. Satellites provide global awareness in ways that other technologies cannot match. The monitoring needed for a serious effort requires observations that can only be done from space.

Solvency Need to Monitor Ecosystems

Remote sensing critical to monitor ecosystems impacted by climate change

Ira Leifer, Marine Science Institute, University of California, 2012, State of the Art Satellite and airborne marine oil spill remote sensing: Application to the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill, Remote Sensing of the Environment, 124, pp. 185-209.1. Vegetation and ecosystem impactsPetroleum hydrocarbons contain many toxic compounds that cause vegetation stress, changing leaf color and damaging the canopy. Longer- term, germination disruption and vegetation mortality can shift the ecosystem towards more chemically tolerant species, altering the dominant species (Li et al., 2005). Imaging spectroscopy has sufficient spec- tral resolution to characterize diagnostic absorption signatures (band position, width, depth, and symmetry) allowing monitoring of soil and vegetation changes. High spectral resolution is critical to enable dis- crimination between vegetation species and other scene items such as soil (Li et al., 2005).Remote sensing provides the spatial coverage and sensitivity to assess oil spill damage and ecosystem impacts over statistically signif- icant areas, provides data for logistically or politically inaccessible sites, and has been used for other disasters, but seldom for oil spills.Change detection and damage detection are two approaches to re- mote sense ecosystem oil spill impacts.In change detection, changes in remote sensing parameters, such as surface reflectance, emittance, SAR backscatter, etc., identify changes such as ecosystem shifts. For example, soil property changes from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil spill for over 100 oil lakes were monitored with Landsat TM land surface temperature (LST) data (Husain & Amin, 1995). Areas with higher LST had either shallower or greater oil contamination than areas with lower LST, and gradually decreased over the 7-year study (Ud Din et al., 2008).Plant stress can be identified by spectral shape changes including shifts towards shorter wavelengths of the red edge, located near 700 nm, due to chlorophyll loss and less scattering between leaves (Boochs et al., 1990). Although vegetation status often is assessed by the normalized difference vegetation index, spectral changes in the shape and location of the red edge are more robust (Li et al., 2005; van der Meijde et al., 2009). Spectral changes in the red edge have identified vegetation stress from petroleum hydrocarbons in ground-based spectrometer data (van der Meijde et al., 2009) and AVIRIS data for an oil spill in Jornada, New Mexico (Li et al., 2005). Be- cause these variations can occur on sub-pixel scales, spectral mixture analysis often is used to characterize the fraction of endmembers (distinct components) in a pixel, such as dominant species (Roberts et al., 1998). SAR monitoring of canopy structural changes also can map plant stress effectively (Ramsey et al., 2011). Because other fac- tors can cause vegetation stress, spatial information on vegetation oil- ing can be important (Li et al., 2005). Combining remote sensing oil hydrocarbon spectral detection (e.g., Fig. 4) with ecosystem stress re- mote sensing can allow discrimination between stresses from oil and other causes.

Solvency US Climate Leadership

Obtaining climate change information is necessary for US global leadership on climate changeJames Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfMeeting the needs of climate policy requires a transformation in how climate research is incorporated into public policymaking. Operationalizing information systemsinvesting in the Earth observation systems necessary for producing the right data over the right time and space horizons, coordinating data collection, interpreting and sharing to maximize the datas benefits, focusing on the human and social science effects of climate change, improving modeling capabili- ties, and making this information accessible and relevant for a wide range of usersis a necessary step in designing effective U.S. climate policy. It also represents an opportunity for America to demonstrate global leadership and contribute to building global capacity to understand and more effectively respond to the climate.

Solvency Plan Advocacy

US should increase earth observation of climate changeJames Lewis, CSIS, 2010, Earth Observation for Climate Change: A Report of the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdfThe U.S. approach to climate change policy needs to inform decisionmakers and planners in both government and the private sector by providing understandable metrics and analyses of the effectiveness of, and compliance with, mitigation programs and adaption plans. The customers for this should include federal agencies, state and local governments, private sector users, and other nations.To better serve the national interest, the United States should increase its Earth observation capabilitiesespecially space-based sensors for carbon monitoringto improve our ability to understand the carbon cycle and to inform any future international agreement. This means that until these capabilities are adequate for monitoring climate change, investment in Earth observation satellites should take precedence over other space programs. Increased spending on earth observation satellites specifically designed for climate change should be maintained until the current capability shortfall is eliminated. The United States should accelerate, expand, and reinforce a National Climate Service to im- prove climate information management and decisionmaking. In a related effort, the United States should support the World Meteorological Organization in its efforts to create a World Climate Service System. The United States should complement its national effort by supporting and expanding multilateral efforts to coordinate Earth observation for climate change, building on existing inter- national efforts such as GCOS. This could entail coordinated investment in space and, subsidies for ground facilities in developing countries, recognizing that the United States, EU, Japan, and Canada will bear the largest share of the cost at this time.More investments should be made in remote sensing

Avery Sen, Masters candidate/Researcher, Space Policy Institute, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, 2004, The benefits of remote sensing for energy policy, Space Policy, 20, pp. 17-24A strong remote sensing regime is a necessary component of any contemporary national or international energy policy. Energy is essential to the functioning of modern industrial society, and as such it is the responsibility of governments to produce sound national energy policies in order to ensure stable economic growth, ecologically responsible use of energy resources and the health and safety of citizens. Comprehensive, accurate and timely remote sensing data can aid decision making on energy matters in several areas. This paper looks at the benefits that can be realized in resource exploration, weather forecasting and environmental monitoring. Improvements in the technology of remote sensing platforms would be of great value to buyers of energy, sellers of energy and the environment. Furthermore, the utility of such information could be enhanced by efforts of government agencies to communicate it more effectively to the end-user. National energy policies should thus include investments not only in satellite system hardware to collect data, but also in the services required to interpret and distribute the data.Solvency A2: OCEAN Monitoring Not KeyOcean warming dramatic and understanding ocean changes is critical to understanding climate changeQuartz.com, February 4, 2014, http://qz.com/173647/climate-change-is-slowly-but-steadily-cooking-the-worlds-oceans/Because the oceans so bigit takes up more than 70% of the planets surfaceit absorbs a lot of energy without anyone being much the wiser. Heres a look at data for the upper 2,000 meters (1.14 miles) of the global ocean. Check out the three-month moving average for the last quarter of 2013, via the National Oceanographic Data Center, which actually goes off the chart:

Roughly speaking, from about1980 to 2000, the ocean gained around 50 zettajoules (ZJ, or 1021 joules)of heat. But from 2000 to 2013, it added another 150 ZJs of heat.Of course, even if you knew what a zettajoule is, its hard to envision what this means. Science Skeptic, a blog on climate change, offers this useful analogy:Over the last half-dozen or so decades, the oceans been storing the heat energy equivalent of about two Hiroshima bombs per second. Worryingly, that rates picking up, with around four bombs per second stored in the last 16 years.In 2013, however, the ocean gained the heat equivalent to about 12 bombs per second,says Science Skeptic.That adds up to more than 378 million atomic bombs a year worth of heat. Thats troublesome, considering that warmerwaters are thought to make hurricanes and typhoons more severe, includingTyphoon Haiyan,which ravaged the Philippines in 2013. Warmer waters also cause global sea levels to rise, threatening property values and exacerbating flooding.

The variation in surface temperature is a big reason peoplesuspect thatthe earth is getting warmer.Deep-ocean temperatures are among the more consistent indicators of how our climate is changing.Solar energy transmitted by greenhouse gases doesnt necessarily translate to warmer surface temperatures, which are also influenced by a slew of other factors, including wind and current.In the last decade, aroundone-third of global warmingshowed up 700 meters under the seas surface or deeper,according to research(pdf) byMagdalena A. Balmaseda, Kevin E. Trenberth and Erland Klln published last year.So while its easy to ignore whats going on a mile under the waves, some 378 million Hiroshima bombs worth of heat a year are begging for our attention.Solvency -- Information Solves

Observational data is key to construct effective adaptation measures in all relevant areas.Evans 12 (2/14/12, Jason, PhD, regional climate and hydrology, Australian National University, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, the climate projection lead for the NARCliM project, and the AustralAsia domain coordinator for the CORDEX project, researcher at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, Regional Climate Modelling: The Future for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Research, http://www.earthzine.org/2012/02/14/regional-climate-modelling-the-future-for-climate-change-impacts-and-adaptation-research/)

With an international agreement to limit greenhouse gases remaining ever elusive, future impacts of climate change on human and natural systems are all but assured. The eventual magnitude of these impacts increases with each year that successful mitigation measures are not in place. Thus, the need for robust quantification of the risks posed to these systems due to climate change is becoming increasingly more urgent. Fundamental questions concerning the magnitude of the impacts and the time frames over which they occur need to be answered. With this knowledge, one can then ask: What adaptation options are available? And, when would an intervention need to occur to be successful?All climate change impacts and adaptation research relies on climate projection information supplied by the climate research community. The required spatial and temporal scales and climate variables vary substantially, depending on the particular impact and system of interest. Quantifying impacts on large-scale water supplies requires knowledge of rainfall and evaporation at daily (or monthly) time scales over large catchments (thousands of square kilometers), while urban water infrastructure requires rainfall data derived over minutes to hours, over comparatively small areas (Figure 1).Coastal erosion (Figure 2) studies require information on winds (and waves) over large expanses of ocean (100 km+) for days, with related storm damage requiring knowledge of extreme wind gusts over minutes. Understanding agricultural impacts requires knowledge of rainfall, temperature, solar radiation, and winds on time scales from hours (e.g. overnight frosts) to seasons, and spatial scales down to fields. Crops also are often sensitive to particular extreme events during parts of the growth cycle, so capturing a wide variety of these often temperature-related extremes also is needed. Urban air pollution is often related to the presence of a low-level atmospheric temperature inversion which traps the produced pollution, thus these impacts require knowledge of the vertical structure of the low-level atmosphere on time scales of hours. Natural systems cover a similarly broad range of variables and spatial and temporal scales.

Knowledge is a prerequisite solvency deficits dont assume the information gathering of the counterplan.Stigter and Winarto 12 (4/4/12, C. Kees, Visiting professor in developing countries, Agromet Vision, Bondowoso, Indonesia, and Bruchem, Netherlands, and Yunita, Academy Professorship Indonesia & Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social & Political Sciences, KNAW-AIPI, Universitas Indonesia, What Climate Change Means for Farmers in Asia, http://www.earthzine.org/2012/04/04/what-climate-change-means-for-farmers-in-asia/)

Vulnerable communities across the world are already feeling the effects of a changing climate. These communities are urgently in need of assistance aimed at building resilience, and at undertaking climate change adaptation efforts as a matter of survival and in order to maintain livelihoods (e.g. [1, 2]). They are in need of an urgent rural response to climate change. The reality of climate change calls for a need to understand how it might affect a range of natural and social systems, and to identify and evaluate options to respond to these effects (e.g. [3]). This should lead to an in-depth investigation of vulnerabilities and adaptations to climate change, which have become central to climate science, policy and practice. The capacity, however, to conduct vulnerability and adaptation assessments is still limited [4].

More research and new observation metrics can remove technical barriers currently preventing adaptation.Lewis et al. 10 (June 2010, James, Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program, CSIS, Sarah O. Ladislaw, Senior Fellow, Energy and National Security Program, CSIS, and Denise E. Zheng, congressional staffer, Earth Observation for Climate Change, http://csis.org/files/publication/100608_Lewis_EarthObservation_WEB.pdf)

Like mitigation, adaptation requires time, money, and planning. It also requires communities to weigh the benefits and the costs of specific adaptation measures, a difficult task made even more complicated by uncertainty regarding the timing and magnitude of climate change. Communities must balance planning for high impact, low probability events with planning for low impact, high probability trends. In addition, economic, technological, cultural, and information barriers to adaptation often challenge even the most conscientious efforts to improve resiliency and lower vulnerability. There are significant challenges in going from predictions of how the climate may change to the effects these changes may have on water, resources, or human health. Meeting this challenge requires boosting adaptation research; bolstering capacity to monitor change and its effects; producing the sorts of integrated assessment on the pace, patterns, and regional effects of climate change that will be needed by decisionmakers and providing metrics and goals for both mitigation and adaptation; and making climate data and information accessible to those who need it.

More information is critical to plan for extreme weather events and sustain agricultural production.Haggar et al. 11 (Aug. 2011, Jeremy, PhD, agroecology, Head of Agriculture, Health and Environment, University of Greenwich, Rebecca Clements, Project Coordinator, Practical Action Latin America, non-profit charity organization focusing on climate change adaptation measures in rural areas, MA, International Studies, Alicia Quezada, Regional Consultancy Manager at Practical Action Latin America, MSc, Development Management, Juan Torres, Climate Change Team Leader, Practical Action Latin America, Technologies for Climate Change Adaptation, http://tech-action.org/Guidebooks/TNA_Guidebook_AdaptationAgriculture.pdf)

The Technology and Its Contribution to AdaptationFor countries to understand their local climate better and thus be able to develop scenarios for climate change, they must have adequate operational systematic observing networks, and access to the data available from other global and regional networks. These systems enable the integration of national early warning systems, GIS mapping of vulnerable areas, meteorological information on flooding and droughts, as well as the mapping of disease outbreaks. In this way, they provide indicators for monitoring the impacts of climate change and facilitate disaster preparedness and adaptation planning.The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is running a number of initiatives aimed at modelling the impacts of climate change on agriculture which provide vital information for national decision-making and planning (Box 4.2).Advantages There are many advantages of having a comprehensive and reliable national climate monitoring system. On a national level, accurate weather forecasting is invaluable for many sectors, particularly agriculture. In developing countries, where the main economic activity of a majority of the population is linked to agriculture, predictions about what environmental conditions can be expected during the year can have a huge impact on peoples livelihoods and the national food supply. Decisions about what crops to plant, when to plant and when to harvest are crucial and the more accurately weather can be forecasted, the better decisions can be taken (Box 4.3).One of the effects of climate change seems to be the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events. These include hurricanes and typhoons, as well as unseasonal extremes of temperature and heavy rains, which can cause droughts, flooding, landslides and other disasters. The devastation that these events can suddenly have on agricultural production means that any improvement on the ability to predict or anticipate them and plan accordingly is invaluable. Due to the complexity of global climate and weather systems and the fact that our understanding is based on modelling using historical data, the regular measurements of specific variables provided by climate monitoring systems is essential for developing early warning systems.

Solvency More Information Key

The disconnect creates a viscious cycle lack of information means policymakers cut funding for information gathering programs.Gail 09 (2/9/09, William, PhD, electrical engineering (focus on Earths magnetosphere), Stanford University, member of the advisory board for NASAs Earth science applications program, former member of the National Research Councils Decadal Survey of Earth Sciences, The Value of Climate-Related Satellite Data, http://www.rff.org/Publications/WPC/Pages/09_02_09_Cimate_Related_Satellite_Data.aspx)

Furthermore, by providing a picture of how resources and natural systems at the local level are impacted by climate change, satellite-based data help to pinpoint where adaptation policies are most needed. Examples include policies to promote the transition to hardier crops in areas at greater risk of drought and construction projects for valuable coastal regions most threatened by sea level rises.Using Satellite Data to Assist Climate PolicyEarth-based observations of climate-related phenomena are a public good. As there is no private market for this information, its collection must be largely funded by the government. NASA is the only U.S. government entity with a portfolio of satellites capable of generating new scientific understanding of climate issues. Over the last twenty years the United States has invested around $1 billion a year in expanding, maintaining, and operating satellites for climate-related monitoring. The most recent congressional stimulus package (as of this writing, HR1, The American Recovery Act of 2009) allocates a further $400 million to fund environmental satellites identified as vital by a 2007 National Academy of Sciences study.NASAs data collection over the last two decades has laid the groundwork for understanding how Earths complex natural variabilityand human influence on itimpacts society. However, the next step is to ensure that this accumulating scientific knowledge is fully applied to improve critical policy and economic decisions. At present there is a fundamental and puzzling disconnect between those parties engaged in crafting domestic climate policy legislation, and those responsible for choosing how to allocate NASA funding among alternative priorities so as to inform policy issues. Legislative proposals provide little detail on how information will be collected and used to monitor emissions control programs, particularly with regard to crediting of forest sequestration and reductions in non-CO2 GHGs. NASA representatives need a more prominent place in deliberations over climate policy design, both to ensure that the best use is made of satellite information and that NA