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MPAs (and MSP) are meant to be proactive mechanisms of areabased ecosystem management (Douvere and Ehler 2008). According to
the precautionary principle lack of information is no excuse for inaction. All
seven North Sea countries have ratified the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) and therefore this principle governs by implication. Yet ,
also be a lesson. There is little reason to assume that MSP would be any
different. MPAs are most needed when numerous and cumulative activities
expose risks to the environment. This is usually the situation near the coast
and in limited ocean spaces such as the North Sea. It is not the same as
when a MPA is established in the middle of the Atlantic where human
presence is considerably limited. The rule seems to be that the
easier their implementation due to minimal local resistance, the less
is the need for them (Gilliland and Laffoley 2008). Marine ecosystems do
not need MPAs if humans do not tamper with them, but that seems to be the
case to a diminishing extent. User-conflicts are likely to magnify and
intensify as more and more MPAs are created. Uses for the same space
are often incompatible and, if ways for different uses to co-exist cannot be
found, it remains logical they must be kept apart. No wonder therefore
(Chuenpagdee et al. 2013). When fishers talk about MPAs and MSP,
issues of exclusion are of primary concern.
This problem is unquestionably serious, and heres why: The rate of change
of ocean pH (measure of acidity) is 10 times faster than 55 million
years ago. That period of geologic history was directly linked to
ship was at maximum capacity and we did not have any space
for more debris. This year, marine debris was collected from waters and
shorelines around northern most islands and atolls: Kure Atoll, Midway Atoll,
Pearl and Hermes Atoll, Lisianski Island and Laysan Island. Approximately
half of the debris was comprised of derelict fishing gear and
plastics from Midway Atolls shallow coral reef environments,
where the team also completed a 27-day land-based mission prior to loading
debris on the 224-ft. NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette. As part of this years
mission, the NOAA team did look for debris from the 2011 tsunami in Japan,
however, no debris with an explicit connection to the tsunami was found.
Scientists monitored marine debris for radiation in partnership with the
Hawaii Department of Health out of abundance of caution and to gather
baseline data from the NWHI. While we did not find debris with an obvious
connection to last years tsunami, this mission was a great opportunity to
leverage activities that had already been planned and see what we might
find, said Carey Morishige, Pacific Islands regional coordinator for NOAAs
populations
cannot become established beyond their range because they have
negative growth rates in these new habitats. However, it is clear that species can adapt to
Why do all species have spatially restricted ranges? The simple answer is that
inhospitable conditions over longer time periods, otherwise there would be no life on land, no mammals in
there is abundant
evidence for adaptation to different environments within the
range of a species, sometimes over short timescales 1 and 2. What
the ocean and only a few species on oceanic islands. Moreover,
then is happening at range edges to prevent adaptation and to stop populations from expanding into new
connected to large, well adapted central populations, the continual immigration of these locally deleterious
alleles could swamp the establishment of locally adaptive alleles, thus maintaining negative population
growth, and again preventing expansion (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, reviewed in [19]). Much
discussion of why evolution fails at range margins hinges on determining how much gene flow is necessary
to maintain adaptive potential at the margins without swamping local adaptation (see Ref. [9] for a recent
treatment). Answering this question requires a clear and detailed understanding of the genetics of
quantitative traits, as well as the nature of selection on these traits. Here, we describe theoretical models
that explore adaptation at range margins, and then examine how they have fared in the light of empirical
data. We divide these models by the type of range edge that they consider: environmental margins,
parapatric margins and hybrid zones. Although these margins differ in the number and type of factors
involved, range expansion in all three depends on locally adaptive alleles becoming established under the
ecological or genetic conditions at the range edge. Integrating range margin research into this broader
theoretical framework will generate important insights into what limits rates of adaptation in nature, a
topic that is particularly relevant given the rapid and widespread ecological changes being generated by
Climate
change represents a major immediate threat to biodiversity . Models
climate change (Box 1). Box 1. Extinction and evolution in response to climate change
and Yohe [71] analysed data for over 1700 species and showed that 73% have recently shifted their
ranges, mostly in the poleward or upward direction predicted by models of climate change. Detailed
studies of European butterflies also reveal similar responses 72 and 73 (Figure I), mostly in generalist, high
dispersal species. However, poleward range shifts in specialist, low dispersal species tend to be associated
with the evolution of increased dispersal abilities
more widespread habitat [75]. Taken together, these studies suggest that, at least in the
poleward range shifts are more common than the local
adaptation that would enable populations to remain where they are
short term,
[42].
AT: Navy
This is a new dynamic, said a former Pentagon official familiar with the operation. The
message is, we know what you are doing, your actions will have
consequences and that we have the capacity and the will and
we are here. A spokesman for the US militarys Pacific Command said that we do
routine operations in these waters and airspace on a regular basis .
More extensive use of surveillance aircraft in the region could be coupled with a greater willingness to
information about the location of vessels in the region. Several governments say they have been caught
escort fisherman from the Philippines and other nations into areas where they have been expelled by the
Chinese. The Obama administration declared South China Sea a US national interest in 2010. Since then
it has watched China take effective control in 2012 of Scarborough Shoal, 120 nautical miles west of the
Philippines main island, Luzon. As well as the altercation at the Second Thomas Shoal this year, Manila has
accused Beijing of reclaiming land for a runway in a disputed area while China has also placed an oil rig in
the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the surveillance flights showed that the US
has
Mr. Lehman was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11
Commission. The Seas Are Great but the Navy Is Small April 27 2012
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702304811304577365570199853412
The more troubling problem is that the administration is counting ships that won't be built at all. Last year,
the president's budget called for cuts of $487 billion over the
next decade. Mr. Obama also supports the additional cuts growing out of the sequester that went
into effect after last year's super committee failed to agree on savings in the overall budget. Unless the
law is changed, this means an additional half-trillion dollars in mandatory defense reductions over the next
Naval
readiness is already highly fragile. In order to meet current
operational requirements, the shrunken fleet stays deployed
longer and gets repaired less. There is now a serious shortage
of Navy combat aircraft, and for the first time since World War
II there are essentially no combat attrition reserves. But the
biggest effect of budget cuts will be on naval shipbuilding.
Currently the Navy has 286 ships. In order to pay for current
operations, Mr. Obama is retiring 11 modern combat ships (seven
decadecuts that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said would be "devastating."
cruisers and four amphibious vessels) well before their useful life. In order to reach a 350-ship fleet in our
The bottom line for the new Optimized Fleet Response Plan is
that the Navy will maintain fewer aircraft carriers ready to
surge in response to national security requirements. Instead
of trying to maintain 3-4 carriers in that status of operational
availability (slide 10), the Navy will maintain two (slide 13). The
operationally available carriers will not be in addition to the deployed carrier in the Persian Gulf region;
they will include the deployed carrier. In other words, there will be a carrier in the Gulf region, and one
additional carrier that is operationally available. At any given time, that second carrier will have to be the
one dedicated to the Far East. It may be the carrier homeported in Japan or, when that carrier is in a
pierside maintenance period in Japan, it will be another Pacific Fleet carrier. (This isnt explicitly reflected in
the slide presentation, but its implied by national policy, which requires immediate response to a Korean
presentation, youll see two hints at that reality. Most of the presentation is devoted to explaining how the
fleet will revise scheduling, maintenance, training, etc to adjust to the new fleet response plan. But the
plans most basic numbers 2 carrier groups at a time; a 36-month cycle; one 8-month deployment per
cycle (slide 13) are ultimately driven by the constraints of money.
we
have reached a readiness low-point at which DOD will have to go to Congress for
more money if it is ordered to plus up its deployed force level for a contingency. There is zero
slack in the level of ready forces, to allow us to surge:
deploy more than we already have operating forward. This means
that if we need to do something that requires more than the
already-deployed forces such as conduct an attack on Irans
nuclear facilities we literally cannot be ready to do it in the
short time it would take to merely deploy the additional forces .
This terse expression means what Ive been saying for a year (see here, here, here, and here): that
The time it will take will have to include making the additional forces operationally ready first. (A potential
alternative is leaving the Far East without a carrier, but thats only a potential alternative: even if were
ready carriers are in their 36-month cycle, and how much money Congress allocates to preparing them.
The most important aspect of this reality is that the president no longer has the discretion to deploy forces
without going to Congress for money, and thus making the political process, both at home and abroad, a
very extended one.
AT: Pakistan
No nuclear escalation for India-Pak War.
Ahmed 09 Ali Ahmed is Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New
Delhi, India-Pakistan Conflict Outcome Probability, IDSA, Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses
In a situation involving limited Indian war aims, Pakistan would respond with
its defensive formations and use its strategic reserves in an offensive mode
wherever possible.7 A Pakistani offensive, though in keeping with
Pakistans doctrine of offensive defence8, may not eventuate in the
event of an early war. Following the imposition of costs through air action,
scope for launching forces into Indian territory in the face of Indias broad
front attacks. As demonstrated at Kargil, India would wrap up any
gains it may make eventually. Pakistan may employ only a small
proportion of its forces in defensive operations, seeking instead to preserve
most of its forces for post-conflict internal political purposes, allowing its
Army to stay at the apex of Pakistans political pyramid.9 In any post-conflict
scenario military losses would compromise the Pakistan Armys grip
on power. Termination of Indias limited offensives would enable
(the nuclear assets)," Dar said, while winding up the debate on the 2013-
the military too has provided details of the special security force raised by the
Strategic Plans Division. Several batches of this force have passed out of
training academies across the country.
AT: US/China
No US-China war
Bisley, 14
(Nick Bisley, Professor of IR @ La Trobe University in Australia and Executive Director of La Trobe Asia, Its
not 1914 all over again: Asia is preparing to avoid war, http://theconversation.com/its-not-1914-all-overagain-asia-is-preparing-to-avoid-war-22875)
Asia is cast as a region as complacent about the risks of war as Europe was in its belle poque. Analogies are an
understandable way of trying to make sense of unfamiliar circumstances. In this case, however, the historical parallel is
deeply misleading. Asia is experiencing a period of uncertainty and strategic risk unseen since the US and China
reconciled their differences in the mid-1970s. Tensions among key powers are at very high levels: Japanese prime minister
Why should this be seen as being more effective than the high levels
Beijing and
Washington are not content to rely on markets alone to keep the peace. They are acutely
aware of how much they have at stake. Diplomatic infrastructure for peace The
two powers have established a wide range of institutional links
to manage their relations. These are designed to improve the level and
quality of their communication, to lower the risks of
misunderstanding spiralling out of control and to manage the trajectory of their
of interdependence between Britain and Germany before World War One? Because
relationship. Every year, around 1000 officials from all ministries led by the top political figures in each country meet
areas. These range from disaster relief to humanitarian aid exercises, from joint training of Afghan diplomats to marine
conservation efforts, in which Chinese law enforcement officials are hosted on US Coast Guard vessels to enforce maritime
Unlike the near total absence of diplomatic engagement by Germany and Britain in the lead-up to
1914, todays two would-be combatants have a deep level of
interaction and practical co-operation. Just as the extensive array of common interests has led
Beijing and Washington to do a lot of bilateral work, Asian states have been busy the past 15 years. These
nations have created a broad range of multilateral institutions and
legal regimes.
mechanisms intended to improve trust, generate a sense of common cause and promote regional prosperity. Some
APEC
ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus Process are less in the public eye. But
there are more than 15 separate multilateral bodies that have a focus on regional security concerns. All these
organisations are trying to build what might be described as an infrastructure
for peace in the region. While these mechanisms are not flawless, and many have rightly been
the
four little uninhabitable rocky islands in the East China Sea needs attention. Speaking ahead of an ANU public lecture on
the risks of war between China and the United States, Professor Paul Dibb pointed out that
historically,
Senkaku islands, or somewhere in the South China Sea, he said. But the fact is, when we have a conflict over four little
uninhabitable rocky islands,
Geography solves
Keck, 13
(Zachary, Associate Editor of The Diplomat. He has previously served as a Deputy Editor for E-IR and as an
Editorial Assistant for The Diplomat, "Why China and the US (Probably) Wont Go to War", July 12,
thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/07/12/why-china-and-the-us-probably-wont-go-to-war/ NL)
Geography is the less appreciated factor that will mitigate the chances
of a U.S.-China war, but it could be nearly as important as nuclear weapons.
Indeed, geography has a history of allowing countries to avoid the Thucydides Trap, and works against a
U.S.-China war in a couple of ways. First, both the United States and China are immensely large
countriesaccording to the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. and China are the third and fourth largest
countries in the world by area, at 9,826,675 and 9,596,961 square km respectively. They also have difficult topographical
unconquerable by another
power. This is an important point and differentiates the current strategic environment from historical cases where
features and complex populations. As such, they are virtually
power transitions led to war. For example, in Europe where many of the historical cases derive from, each state genuinely
had to worry that the other side could increase their power capabilities to such a degree that they could credibly threaten
violent power transitions of the past, starting with Sparta and Athens but also including the European ones, the rival
British power transition and the peaceful end to the Cold War. The reason is simple and similar to the one above: the
difficulty of projecting power across large distancesparticularly bodies of waters reduces each sides concern that the
other will threaten its national survival and most important strategic interests. True, the U.S. operates extensively in
Chinas backyard, and maintains numerous alliances and partnerships with Beijings neighbors. This undeniably heightens
the risk of conflict. At the same time, the British were active throughout the Western Hemisphere, most notably in Canada,
and the Americans maintained a robust alliance system in Western Europe throughout the Cold War. Even with the U.S.
presence in Asia, then, the fact that the Chinese and American homelands are separated by the largest body of water in
the world is enormously important in reducing their conflict potential, if history is any guide at least. Thus,
while
Methane
Offshore drilling is safe in the status quo regulations
and partnership vision.
Steffy 13 Loren Steffy, an award-winning business columnist for the Houston Chronicle, and before
that, as a senior writer at Bloomberg News and author of Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of
Profit, and The Man Who Thought Like a Ship, A Long Overdue Change Could Make Offshore Drilling
Safer, http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2013/10/29/a-long-overdue-change-could-make-offshoredrilling-safer/
Even before cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico was complete, the oil and
companies must find and fix leaks and use stronger emission
controls for storage tanks, dehydrators and gas vents from
wells. The Colorado rule-making is a model for other states and the nation.
Last June Pres. Obama included methane controls in his Climate Action Plan,
and in the months since an interagency task force has been examining
recent
climate could cause gas hydrates to break down (dissociate), releasing the methane that they now trap.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. For a given volume, methane causes 15 to 20 times more
greenhouse-gas warming than carbon dioxide, and so the release of large volumes of methane to the
atmosphere could, in theory, exacerbate climate warming and cause more gas hydrates to destabilize.
Some research suggests that such large-scale, climate-driven dissociation events have occurred in the
past. For example, extreme warming during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 55 million
years ago may have been related to a large-scale release of methane from global methane hydrates. Some
scientists have also advanced the clathrate-gun hypothesis to explain observations that may be consistent
with repeated, catastrophic dissociation of gas hydrates and triggering of submarine landslides during the
late Quaternary (400,000 to 10,000 years ago). Methane As a Greenhouse Gas The atmospheric
concentration of methane, like that of carbon dioxide, has increased since the onset of the Industrial
Revolution. Methane in the atmosphere comes from many sources, including wetlands, rice cultivation,
termites, cows and other ruminants, forest fires, and fossil-fuel production. Some researchers have
estimated that as much as 2 percent of atmospheric methane may originate with dissociation of global gas
hydrates. Currently, scientists do not have a tool to say with certainty how much, if any, atmospheric
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 20th century should not lead to
catastrophic breakdown of methane hydrates or major leakage
of methane to the ocean-atmosphere system from gas
hydrates that dissociate. Although most methane hydrates would have to experience
sustained warming over thousands of years before dissociation was triggered, gas hydrates in some places
are dissociating now in response to short- and long-term climatic processes. The following discussion refers
to the numbered type locales or sectors shown in the diagram of gas-hydrate deposits below. Sector 1,
could cause gas hydrates at the top of the stability zone, about 625 feet (190 meters) below the Earths
surface, to begin to dissociate. Sector 2, Shallow Arctic Shelf: The shallow-water continental shelves that
circle parts of the Arctic Ocean were formed when sea-level rise during the past 10,000 years inundated
permafrost that was at the coastline. Subsea permafrost is thawing beneath these continental shelves, and
associated methane hydrates are likely dissociating now. (For example, see related Sound Waves article
"Degradation of Subsea Permafrost and Associated Gas Hydrates Offshore of Alaska in Response to Climate
Change.") If methane from these gas hydrates reaches the seafloor, much of it will likely be emitted to the
atmosphere. Less than 1 percent of the worlds gas hydrates probably occur in this setting, but this
estimate could be revised as scientists learn more. Sector 3, Upper Edge of Stability: Gas hydrates on
upper continental slopes, beneath 1,000 to 1,600 feet (300 to 500 meters) of water, lie at the shallowest
water depth for which methane hydrates are stable. The upper continental slopes, which ring all of the
worlds continents, could host gas hydrate in zones that are roughly 30 feet (10 meters) thick. Warming
Methane
emitted at these water depths will probably dissolve or be
oxidized in the water column and is unlikely to reach the
atmosphere. About 3.5 percent of the Earths gas hydrates occur in this climate-sensitive setting.
ocean waters could completely dissociate these gas hydrates in less than 100 years.
Sector 4, Deepwater: Most of the Earths gas hydrates, about 95 percent, occur in water depths greater
than 3,000 feet (1,000 meters). They are likely to remain stable even with a sustained increase in bottom
temperatures over thousands of years. Most of the gas hydrates in these settings occur deep within the
sediments. If the gas hydrates do dissociate, the released methane should remain trapped in the
sediments, migrate upward to form new gas hydrates, or be consumed by oxidation in near-seafloor
sediments. Most methane released at the seafloor would likely dissolve or be oxidized in the water column.
A recent article, Methane Hydrates and Contemporary Climate Change, provides more detail.
Based on the knowledge that noble gas molecules partition into the gas
hydrate lattice in the order of their molecular weight, the USGS Gas