1

Oceans are large bodies of salt water that cover the Earth
NALMS 14 North American Lake Management Society, WATER WORDS

GLOSSARY, http://www.nalms.org/home/publications/water-words-glossary/O.cmsx
OCEAN Generally, the whole body of salt water which covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the globe . The
average depth of the ocean is estimated to be about 13,000 feet (3,960 meters); the greatest reported depth is
34,218 feet (10,430 meters), north of Mindanao in the Western Pacific Ocean. The ocean bottom is a generally level
or gently undulating plain, covered with a fine red or gray clay, or, in certain regions, with ooze of organic origin.
The water, whose composition is fairly constant, contains on the average 3 percent of dissolved salts; of this solid
portion, common salt forms about 78 percent, magnesium salts 15-16 percent, calcium salts 4 percent, with smaller
amounts of various other substances. The density of ocean water is about 1.026 (relative to distilled water, or pure
H2O). The oceans are divided into the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic Oceans .

Ocean development is utilization as a resource

Owen 3 Daniel Owen, Consultant to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization,

Legal And Institutional Aspects Of Management Arrangements For Shared Stocks

With Reference To Small Pelagics In Northwest Africa, FAO Fisheries Circular No.
988, http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4698b/y4698b04.htm
1.2 The legal regime for management of shared stocks For a stock shared between
two or more neighbouring coastal States and not ranging onto the high seas, the
regime of Art 63(1) LOSC is appropriate. It states that: Where the same stock or
stocks of associated species occur within the exclusive economic zones of two or
more coastal States, these States shall seek, either directly or through appropriate
subregional or regional organizations, to agree upon the measures necessary to
coordinate and ensure the conservation and development of such stocks without
prejudice to the other provisions of this Part. Regarding the term
development, Nandan, Rosenne and Grandy[4] state that: The reference
to development... relates to the development of those stocks as fishery
resources . This includes increased exploitation of little-used stocks, as
well as improvements in the management of heavily-fished stocks for more
effective exploitation. Combined with the requirement in article 61 of not
endangering a given stock by overexploitation, this envisages a long-term strategy
of maintaining the stock as a viable resource.

Violation the aff builds up coastal defense measures like

levees which arent in the ocean and doesn't extract resources
Ground they can spike out of all our ocean generics like
environment DAs, ocean crowding and navy DAs
Limits---other interpretations make all ocean activity topical,
even activity that is only tangentially related---explodes
research burdens and makes preparation impossible

2
Exploration and development relies on nature being a resource for
our exploitation this new form of nature imperialism relies on the
division between human and nature

Rojcewicz 6 (Richard Rojcewicz, Professor of Philosophy @ Point Park University, The Gods and
Technology: A Reading of Heidegger, 2006,

http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_10597.pdf) // KC
In contrast, today the land is challenged ; i.e., it is
ravished for its coal and ore. The earth is now looked upon precisely
as a coal lode, the soil as an ore depository. The field the farmer of old used to
cultivate appeared differently, i.e., when to cultivate still meant to tend and to nurture. The farmer of old did not
challenge the soil of the field. In sowing the grain, the farmer consigned the seed to the forces of growth, and then

the ordering of the field has been sucked

into the maelstrom of a different sort of ordering, one that imposes
on nature. It imposes on it in the sense of challenging it. Agriculture
is now mechanized foodstuffs industry. The air is imposed upon to
relinquish nitrogen, the soil to relinquish ore, the ore to relinquish,
among other things, uranium, and the latter is imposed upon to
disgorge atomic energy, which can be unleashed for destructive or peaceful ends. (FT, 1516/14
he tended to its increase. In the meantime,

15) This is a clear and vigorous paragraph that scarcely needs commentary. The main point is unmistakable, as
illustrated in the example of traditional farming versus modern agriculture. The farmer of old submitted, tended,
and nurtured. These are the quintessential activities of poiesis; the old way of farming is midwifery, and what it
brings forth is that with which nature is already pregnant. Modern agriculture, on the other hand, hardly brings forth

Modern agriculture does

not submit seeds to the forces of growth; on the contrary, it
interferes with the seeds, genetically manipulating them. The forces
of growth are now in the farmers own hands, which is to say that
she imposes the conditions that determine growth. The end product, in the
crops; it produces foodstuffs or, perhaps we should rather say, ingesta.

extreme case, to which we may be heading inexorably, is astronauts food. It would be a travesty to say grace

They are not gifts; they are human

creations. They are not grown; they are synthesized. They are
created by someone playing God, and it would make no sense to pray to God before ingesting
them. What Heidegger means by imposing is playing God. To play God is to place oneself
above nature, to look upon nature as subservient to ones own
bidding. For Heidegger, this is an imperious, adolescent, violent attitude.
Modern technology violates nature; it forces nature to hand over its
treasures, it throttles them out of nature, and nature then must
precisely disgorge. According to Heidegger, the earth, the air, and the fields
now look different. We see the earth as an enormous mineral lode,
we see the air as anemo-energy, we see the river as hydraulic
power. There is an obvious sense in which this is true, but the correct order of motivation is not so obvious. It is
not because the earth is ravished that it now looks like a store of minerals; on the contrary, the earth
comes to be ravished precisely because of the way we now see it.
The disclosive looking comes first; the possibilities come before the
before eating a meal of such foods.

actualities. We must first look upon the earth, upon nature in

general, in a certain way; then we can exploit what we see. And that
way of looking is the way of modern technology; i.e., it is the
disrespectful way that sees in nature something there merely to
satisfy, as efficiently as possible, human needs and whims. That is the
most basic outlook of modern technology; concretely, it amounts to seeing in nature
energy as such, minable, hoardable, exploitable energy. Nature is
exploited because it is disclosed as something exploitable; the
disclosure of the exploitable possibilities precedes the actual
exploiting. It requires scientific advancements to exploit nature; but the precedent seeing of nature as
exploitable is not a matter of science. It is a theoretical and not a practical or experimental affair; it is a way of
disclosive looking that expresses, for Heidegger, the essence of modern technology.

This results in the destruction of nature and extinction

The Dark Mountain 9 (Uncivilization, network of writers, artists, and thinkers, The Dark
Mountain Manifesto, http://dark-mountain.net/about/manifesto/, 2009)

The myth of progress is founded on the myth of nature. The first tells us
that we are destined for greatness; the second tells us that greatness is cost-free. Each is

Both tell us that we are apart from the

world; that we began grunting in the primeval swamps, as a humble
part of something called nature, which we have now triumphantly
subdued. The very fact that we have a word for nature is [5]
evidence that we do not regard ourselves as part of it. Indeed, our
separation from it is a myth integral to the triumph of our civilisation.
intimately bound up with the other.

We are, we tell ourselves, the only species ever to have attacked nature and won. In this, our unique glory is contained.
Outside the citadels of self-congratulation, lone voices have cried out against this infantile version of the human story for
centuries, but it is only in the last few decades that its inaccuracy has become laughably apparent. We are the first

our attempt to separate ourselves from

nature has been a grim failure, proof not of our genius but our
hubris. The attempt to sever the hand from the body has endangered
the progress we hold so dear, and it has endangered much of
nature too. The resulting upheaval underlies the crisis we now face. We imagined
ourselves isolated from the source of our existence . The fallout from this
imaginative error is all around us: a quarter of the worlds mammals are
threatened with imminent extinction; an acre and a half of rainforest
is felled every second; 75% of the worlds fish stocks are on the verge
of collapse; humanity consumes 25% more of the worlds natural
products than the Earth can replace a figure predicted to rise to
80% by mid-century. Even through the deadening lens of statistics, we can glimpse
the violence to which our myths have driven us. And over it all looms
runaway climate change. Climate change, which threatens to render
all human projects irrelevant; which presents us with detailed evidence of our lack of
understanding of the world we inhabit while, at the same time, demonstrating that we are
still entirely reliant upon it. Climate change, which highlights in painful colour the head-on
crash between civilisation and nature; which makes plain, more effectively than any carefully
generations to grow up surrounded by evidence that

constructed argument or optimistically defiant protest, how the machines need for permanent
growth will require us to destroy ourselves in its name. Climate change, which brings home at last
our ultimate powerlessness. These are the facts, or some of them. Yet facts never tell the whole story.
(Facts, Conrad wrote, in Lord Jim, as if facts could prove anything.) The facts of environmental crisis we

We hear daily about the

impacts of our activities on the environment ( like nature, this is an
hear so much about often conceal as much as they expose.

expression which distances us from the reality of our situation). Daily

we hear, too, of the many solutions to these problems: solutions which
usually involve the necessity of urgent political agreement and a
judicious application of human technological genius. Things may be
changing, runs the narrative, but there is nothing we cannot deal with
here, folks. We perhaps need to move faster, more urgently. Certainly
we need to accelerate the pace of research and development. We
accept that we must become more sustainable. But everything will be fine. There will
still be growth, there will still be progress: these things will continue, because they have to continue, so they cannot do
anything but continue. There is nothing to see here. Everything will be fine. We do not believe that everything will be fine.
We are not even sure, based on current definitions of progress and improvement, that we want it to be. Of all humanitys
delusions of difference, of its separation from and superiority to the living world which surrounds it, one distinction holds up
better than most:

we may well be the first species capable of effectively

eliminating life on Earth. This is a hypothesis we seem intent on putting to the test. We are

already responsible for denuding the world of much of its richness, magnificence, beauty, colour and magic,
and we show no sign of slowing down. For a very long time, we imagined that nature was something that
happened elsewhere. The damage we did to it might be regrettable, but needed to be weighed against the
benefits here and now. And in the worst case scenario, there would always be some kind of Plan B.

Perhaps we would make for the moon, where we could survive in

lunar colonies under giant bubbles as we planned our expansion
across the galaxy. But there is no Plan B and the bubble, it turns out, is where we have
been living all the while. The bubble is that delusion of isolation under which we have laboured for so long.

The bubble has cut us off from life on the only planet we have, or are ever likely to
have. The bubble is civilisation. Consider the structures on which that
bubble has been built. Its foundations are geological: coal, oil, gas millions upon millions of years of
ancient sunlight, dragged from the depths of the planet and burned with abandon. On this base, the structure stands. Move

burning
forests; beam-trawled ocean floors; dynamited reefs; hollowed-out
mountains; wasted soil. Finally, on top of all these unseen layers, you reach the well-tended
upwards, and you pass through a jumble of supporting horrors: battery chicken sheds; industrial abattoirs;

surface where you and I stand: unaware, or uninterested, in what goes on beneath us; demanding that the
authorities keep us in the manner to which we have been accustomed; occasion- ally feeling twinges of guilt
that lead us to buy organic chickens or locally-produced lettuces; yet for the most part glutted, but not sated,
on the fruits of the horrors on which our lifestyles depend.

The alternative is to reject the 1acs environmental dualisms this

eliminates the concept of an environment and solves destruction
of the planet
Rowe 96 Stan Rowe, Professor Emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan, 1996 (From Shallow To Deep
Ecological Philosophy, Trumpeter, Volume 13, Number 1, Available Online at
http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/view/278/413)

Implicit here is a devastating criticism of sociology and

communitarian politics that will improve the human condition by
sole attention to populations, societies and social ills. Alarmed by the fact that
the barbarians are not hammering on the frontier walls but are already here governing us, Macintyre (1981)
called for new forms of community to sustain the moral life and survive the coming ages of barbarism and
darkness. Such fervent hopes seemed realizable before the Age of Ecology. But now we know that groups of

The
community with survival value can never again be conceived as a
people-only free-standing entity, able to weather the storms
generated by humanistic arrogance. Only Earth ecosystems in which humans are
like-minded people banded togetherthe traditional communitycannot make it alone.

cooperating, serving parts can achieve long-term health and sustainability. Where Does Life Reside? The
hierarchical series organ-organism-ecosystem-ecosphere represents a scale of increasing complexity and
creativity. The last member, the ecosphere, is the leading candidate for embodiment of the organizing
principle called life. What gives life to the cell? The living organ that is its surrounding environment. What
give life to the organ? The living organism within which it is embodied. What gives life to the organism? The
surrounding living ecosystem and the global ecosphere. The October 94 issue of Scientific American, titled
Life in the Universe, presented a state-of-the-art account of how planet Earth and organic earthlings

creaturely relatives and ourselvescame to be. Throughout the text the words organisms and life were
used as synonyms. Two contributors made a stab at clarifying what the second concept might or might not
mean. Robert Kates suggested that life is simply organic matter capable of reproducing itself, or the mix
of living things that fill the places we are familiar with. More circumspect, Carl Sagan was content to falsify
current definitions, implying that a satisfactory meaning for life has yet to be found. Organisms can be
alive one moment and dead the next with no quantitative difference. The recently deceased organism
has lost none of its physical parts yet it lacks lifean unknown quality of organization (perhaps that
mystery called energy?) but not the organization itself. A still stronger reason exists for not equating life
and organisms. The latter only exhibit aliveness in the context of life-supporting systems, though

it is as if all agreed that

only a tree trunks cambial layer is alive while its support system
the trees bole and roots of bark and wood that envelops and
supports the cambiumis dead. Instead we perceive the whole tree
as alive. The separation of living organisms from their supportive
but dead environments is a reductionist convention that ecology
disproves. Both organic and inorganic are functional parts of
enveloping ecosystems, of which the largest one accessible to direct
experience is the global ecosphere. To attribute the organizing
principle life to Earthto the ecosphere and its sectoral aquatic
and terrestrial ecosystemsmakes more sense than attempting to
locate it in organisms per se, divorced from their requisite milieus. The aquatic ecologist
curiously the vitality of the latter has mostly been denied. By analogy,

Lindeman (1942) who pioneered examination of lakes as energetic systems adopted the ecosystem concept
because of the blurred distinction between living and dead in the components of the Minnesota lakes he
studied. The Biological Fallacy, equating organisms with life, is the result of a faulty inside-the-system view
(Rowe 1991). Pictures of the blue-and-white planet Earth taken from the outside are intuitively recognized as

people perceive a particulate

world separable into important and unimportant parts: the organic
and the inorganic, biotic and abiotic, animate and
inanimate, living and dead. Religions, philosophies and
sciences have been constructed around these ignorant taxonomies,
perpetuating the departmentalization of a global ecosystem whose
aliveness is as much expressed in its improbable atmosphere,
crustal rocks, seas, soils and sediments as in organisms. When did life begin?
images of a living cell. Inside that cell, cheated by sight,

When did any kind of creative organization begin? Perhaps when the ecosphere came into existence.
Perhaps earlier at time zero and the Big Bang. Important human attitudes hinge on the idea of life and where

If only organisms are imbued with life, then things like us are
important and all else is relatively unimportant. The biocentric preoccupation with
it resides.

organisms subtly supports anthropocentrism, for are we not first in neural complexity among all organisms?

Earth has traditionally been thought to consist of consequential

entitiesorganisms, living beingsand their relatively
inconsequential dead environments. What should be attended to,
cared for, worried about? The usual answer today is life in its
limited sense of organisms, of biodiversity. Meanwhile sea, land
and airclassified as dead environmentcan be freely exploited. In
the reigning ideology as long as large organisms are safeguarded,
anything goes. We demean Earth by equating life and organisms, then proving by text-book
definition that Earth is dead because not-an-organism. In this way mental doors are barred against the idea
of liveliness everywhere. Certainly Earth is not an organism, nor is it a super organism as Lovelock has
proposed, any more than organisms are Earth or mini-Earth . The planetary ecosphere and its sectoral
volumetric ecosystems are SUPRA-organismic, higher levels of integration than mere organisms. Essential to
the ecocentric idea is assignment of highest value to the ecosphere and to the ecosystems that it comprises.
Note the use of ecosphere rather than biosphere, the latter usually defined as a life-filled (read
organism-filled) thin shell at Earths surface. The meaning of ecosphere goes deeper; it is Earth to the
core, comprising the totality of gravity and electro-magnetic fields, the molten radioactive magma that shifts
the crustal plates, vulcanism and earthquakes and mountain building that renew nutrients at the surface,
the whole dynamic evolving stage where organisms play out their many roles under the guidance of the
larger whole, shaped at least in part by the morphic fields of the living Gaia (Sheldrake 1991:162). In
different times and places the source of life has been attributed to the air, to soil, to water, to fire, as well as

to organisms. As with the blind men touching the elephant, each separate part has been the imagined

Now that the planet has been

conceptualized as one integrated entity, can we not logically attribute
the creative synthesizing quintessence called life to it, rather than to any one class of its various
essential component of the whole Earth.

parts? When life is conceived as a function of the ecosphere and its sectoral ecosystem the subject matter of

The pejorative concept of environment

vanishes. The focus of vital interest broadens to encompass the world.
Anthropocentrism and biocentrism receive the jolting shock they
deserve. The answer as to where our preservation emphasis should
center is answered: Earth spaces (and all that is in them) first, Earth
species second. This priority guarantees no loss of vital parts. The implications of locating animation
Biology is cast in a bright new light.

where it belongs, of denying the naive Life = Organisms equation, are many. Perhaps most important is a
broadening of the Schweizerian reverence for life to embrace the whole Earth. Reverence for life means

We should feel the same pain when the atmosphere

and the seas are poisoned as when people are poisoned. We should
feel more pain at the destruction of wild ecosystems, such as the
temperate rain forest of the West Coast, than at the demise of any
organism, no matter how sad the latter occasion, because the destruction of ecosystems severs the
reverence for ecosystems.

very roots of evolutionary creativity.

Case

Solvency
SQ solves
Standen 12 environmental reporter and journalist for NPR and QUEST, a

program funded by the National Science Administration (Amy, Tsunami Program

Faces Cuts One Year After Disaster, QUEST,
http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/tsunami-program-faces-cuts-one-year-afterdisaster)//SP
It could have been worse here in Santa Cruz, too, if not for a warning system that
prompted people to vacate their boats and head inland.
David Oppenheimer, of the United States Geological Survey, says alarms around the
world started ringing within 15 minutes after the fault ruptured off the coast of
Japan.
Based on the shaking, computer models can predict how big a tsunami the quake
might produce, and where it might hit. But those are just predictions.
"You dont know how high the wave is." says Oppenheimer. For that, theres
another system in place: 39 buoys theyre called DART buoys, Deep Ocean
Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis each the size of a small car,
positioned in a ring around the Pacific Ocean.
At the base of each buoy is a pressure recorder, a device that can measure how
much water sits above it. When the tsunami wave rolls by, the difference in
pressure is translated into a signal, which is transmitted via satellite from the buoy
to government monitoring centers in Alaska and Hawaii.

The affirmative doesn't solve the impact of a Tsunami. The just

detect if it will happen or not. That doesn't stop the Tsunami
from happening
DART has already been implemented and is sufficient to solve
Lautenbacher 05(Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr, Undersecretary of commerce for
oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator, National Academy of Engineering,
Summer 2005, da: July 19 2014, Tsunami Warning Systems,
https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/SystemsChallengesonaGlobalScale/Tsunam
iWarningSystems.aspx,PS)
The Deep-Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) System Although
much of the world has focused on tsunamis relatively recently, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been conducting research on the
causes and consequences of tsunamis and using technology to help detect
and warn of their presence for more than three decades. The first deep-ocean
assessment and reporting of tsunamis (DART) buoy, or tsunameter, was
created in the engineering laboratory of NOAAs Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, Washington. DART systems use bottom-pressure
recorders (BPRs) capable of detecting and measuring a tsunami with an amplitude
as small as 1 centimeter in 6,000 meters of water. Data are then relayed by
acoustic modem to a surface buoy, which transmits the information to a ground
station via satellite. The data are displayed in real time at

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart.shtml. PMEL began development of the DART

system in 1987, and a prototype system was deployed for two months off the
Washington-Oregon coast in the summer of 1995. The surface buoy performed well,
but data losses of approximately 5 percent were noted. In March 1997, a redesigned
system was deployed in deep water off Oahu, Hawaii. This newer system was
designed to reduce data loss by quantifying the acoustic-beam pattern,
signal-to-noise levels, acoustic-modem baffle performance, and mooring
and hardware design parameters. The deep-water test was successful, and two
demonstration systems were subsequently fabricated and tested. The standard
DART surface buoy has a current design life of one year, and the seafloor
BPR package has a life of two years. The system has proven to be robust and
reliable with a cumulative data return of 96 percent since 1998. The DART, or
tsunameter, which costs about $250,000 for each station, has demonstrated its
value many times over for the state of Hawaii. DART is one of NOAAs many
research-to-operations success stories . The transition period for the
newest system began in 2001 and ended in October 2003 . On November 17,
2003, DART detected a small tsunami generated by an earthquake near Adak,
Alaska, but based on data collected from DART buoys, no warning was issued for
this event, which saved Hawaii an estimated $68 million. This event showed that
sometimes the greatest benefit of a warning system is knowing when not
to evacuate. This becomes clear when we look back to an event of similar
magnitude in 1986 in the same region that resulted in the evacuation of Hawaiis
coastal areas. At the time, predictions of the amplitude of tsunamis were difficult to
make, and the tsunami that eventually struck the coastline was less than a foot in
height. Thankfully, it caused no damage, but the Hawaii Department of Business,
Economic Development and Tourism estimated that the evacuation cost the state
$40 million in lost productivity and business.

Framing
Biggest moral obligation is to prevent extinction- our evidence
is comparative
Bostrom and Andersen, 12 - the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and a
journalist interviewing him (Nick and Ross, The Atlantic, We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction,
3/6/12, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-humanextinction/253821/)//jk

Well suppose you have a moral view that counts future people as being
worth as much as present people. You might say that fundamentally it
doesn't matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some
future time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral
point of view, it doesn't matter where somebody is spatially---somebody
isn't automatically worth less because you move them to the moon or to
Africa or something. A human life is a human life. If you have that moral point
of view that future generations matter in proportion to their population numbers,
then you get this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a
much higher utility than pretty much anything else that you could do.
There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if
humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of
years, our descendants might colonize billions of solar systems, and there
could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently.
Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this
enormous good will tend to outweigh even immense benefits like
eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under
ordinary standards.

The aff links back to their criticism of predictions attempting

to predict natural disasters magnifies their impacts
Petley 12 (David Petley is executive director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and
Resilience, University of Durham, Attempts to predict earthquakes may do more
harm than good An inaccurate earthquake prediction is likely to have worse
consequences than if there had been no prediction at all,
http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/30/attempts-predictearthquakes-harm-good, ZS)
Almost every time a large earthquake strikes an inhabited area questions
are raised in the media about why the event was not predicted. The
argument is that a successful prediction would greatly reduce the loss of
life, if not necessarily the economic damage, by permitting dangerous
buildings to be evacuated, tsunami-prone areas to be cleared, and
hospitals and rescue teams to be prepared and on standby. Given that this
vision sounds so appealing, it is perhaps surprising that most specialists
working on natural hazards argue that work on prediction is at best a red
herring, and at worst has adverse impacts on our ability to manage
disasters. First, we should be clear about what is meant by prediction. In
this context we mean that in advance of an earthquake a correct estimate is made
of its magnitude, location and time of occurrence. To be useful an earthquake

prediction needs to include all three. It is of course reasonable to provide a

prediction that indicates a range of values, within reason. So a prediction that an
earthquake with a magnitude between 7.4 and 7.6 might occur in a particular
location between 16:00 and 20:00 on a particular day would probably be fine; a
prediction that an event of magnitude 2.0 to 9.0 might occur in May
somewhere in the US is unhelpful (and guaranteed to be right, of course).
So what are the objections to investment in, and reliance upon, prediction?
Let's set aside for the moment the technical concerns (and there are
many). The first problem is one of the impact of the prediction itself,
especially long-range predictions. Let's imagine a scenario in which a longrange prediction is possible, and postulate a situation in which a correct
prediction is made today that on 30 May 2013 an earthquake of magnitude
8.2 will strike the fictional city of Newtown. If we were 100% confident in our
prediction, the city could be evacuated in advance, dangerous buildings
could be knocked down, and the emergency services made ready. But what
would be the economic and social impact of the prediction over the
coming year? It is likely that a large number of people would move away,
businesses would shut down, and the economy would probably go into
freefall. The economic and social cost for Newtown would be huge and
indeed might be greater than the cost of the earthquake itself. This is
made far worse when one considers that the prediction cannot be 100%
reliable indeed as I'll show below it is likely to be a long way from this
which means that it could well be a false alarm, or the magnitude might be
overestimated, or the location would be wrong. In this case of course the
unnecessary damage to the economy and social functioning of Newtown
would be very large indeed. So if the economic and social impacts of a
very long-term prediction are problematic, what about short-term
predictions? Say a prediction could be made that the same earthquake will
strike Newtown 24 hours from now. This would avoid the long-term
economic and social impacts, but would permit a high level of
preparedness to be achieved. Again, buildings could be evacuated, hospitals
made ready, schools closed, etc. In essence this is appealing, but the practical
problem lies again with uncertainty in the prediction. Let's say the
prediction was perfectly correct in terms of the time and the magnitude,
but was 200 kilometres out for the location. This could have disastrous
consequences if the population has been moved from the area of the prediction into
the area that is now affected. This could (and probably would) make the impact of
the earthquake far more serious than if no prediction had been made. Or let's say
that the earthquake location and magnitude was exactly right, but that it happened
three days later than the prediction. There is a large chance that the population
would start to move back into the affected area, and could be more
vulnerable than if no prediction had been made. In reality, the mechanics of
earthquakes makes predicting them even more problematic. First, while it is
common to imagine that an earthquake is similar to a bomb being detonated at a
point underground, with the energy waves travelling away from that point, the
actual mechanisms are rather different. In fact, an earthquake occurs as a result of
two blocks moving past each other on a fault an underground surface with
energy waves being radiated from every point on that surface. The earthquake
typically starts with a rupture event that starts a slippage, which then spreads along
the fault over a period typically of a few minutes. The magnitude of the earthquake

(the amount of energy released) depends on how much of the fault slips, how
much movement occurs and the type of slip that is generated. These
parameters also determine the area affected by the earthquake: in general
it is places close to the fault that receive the most intense shaking. So
forecasting which parts of the fault might slip once a rupture starts is
incredibly important and really difficult. In the 2008 Wenchuan (Sichuan)
earthquake the rupture started at one end of the fault, with the
earthquake then propagating for over 200km to the northeast. In other
cases the rupture propagates in both directions along the fault, and even
jumps to other fault segments. A reliable prediction would somehow need
to account for this behaviour, which looks unrealistic in the short term at
least. So even if the location and timing of the rupture event were
correctly anticipated, the actual earthquake event in terms of area
affected and magnitude would still be unclear. Second, the magnitude of
damage depends on the depth of the earthquake. Sometimes large
earthquakes occur at very significant depths (more than 50km), in which case
typically a wide area is shaken, but the intensity of the ground motions is
comparatively small. At other times the earthquake is very shallow (10km
or so, with movement affecting faults that reach the surface), in which case
the shaking is typically more intense but affects a smaller area. And finally
there is the problem of false alarms. False positives (cases in which a
prediction is made but no earthquake occurs crying wolf) would quickly
result in a loss of confidence in the system. False negatives (cases in which
no prediction was made for an earthquake that actually occurs) are also very
problematic because a population that is convinced that it is likely to be
warned before an earthquake is likely to be less prepared, increasing the
impacts when they occur

Disasters
Every credible measure of study shows violence is down
because of everything consistent with the SQ heg,
democracy, liberal trade its only a question of sustaining
current dynamics and preventing changes like the aff
Pinker 11 (Steven Pinker is Professor of psychology at Harvard University
"Violence Vanquished" Sept 24
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180.html)
On the day this article appears, you will read about a shocking act of violence. Somewhere in the world there will be
a terrorist bombing, a senseless murder, a bloody insurrection. It's impossible to learn about these catastrophes

without thinking, "What is the world coming to?" But a better question may be, "How bad was the world in the
past?" Believe it or not, the world of the past was much worse. Violence has been in decline for thousands of
years, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in the existence of our species. The decline, to be
sure, has not been smooth. It has not brought violence down to zero, and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is a
persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking
of children. This claim, I know, invites skepticism, incredulity, and sometimes anger. We tend to estimate the
probability of an event from the ease with which we can recall examples, and scenes of carnage are more likely to
be beamed into our homes and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age. There will

always be enough violent deaths to fill the evening news, so people's impressions of violence will be disconnected
from its actual likelihood. Evidence of our bloody history is not hard to find. Consider the genocides in the Old
Testament and the crucifixions in the New, the gory mutilations in Shakespeare's tragedies and Grimm's fairy tales,
the British monarchs who beheaded their relatives and the American founders who dueled with their rivals. Today

the decline in these brutal practices can be quantified. A look at the numbers shows that over the course of our
history, humankind has been blessed with six major declines of violence . The first was a process of pacification: the
transition from the anarchy of the hunting, gathering and horticultural societies in which our species spent most of
its evolutionary history to the first agricultural civilizations, with cities and governments, starting about 5,000 years
ago. For centuries, social theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau speculated from their armchairs about what life was
like in a "state of nature." Nowadays we can do better. Forensic archeologya kind of "CSI: Paleolithic"can

estimate rates of violence from the proportion of skeletons in ancient sites with bashed-in skulls, decapitations or
arrowheads embedded in bones. And ethnographers can tally the causes of death in tribal peoples that have
recently lived outside of state control. These investigations show that, on average, about 15% of people in prestate
eras died violently, compared to about 3% of the citizens of the earliest states. Tribal violence commonly subsides
when a state or empire imposes control over a territory, leading to the various "paxes" (Romana, Islamica, Brittanica
and so on) that are familiar to readers of history. It's not that the first kings had a benevolent interest in the welfare
of their citizens. Just as a farmer tries to prevent his livestock from killing one another, so a ruler will try to keep his
subjects from cycles of raiding and feuding. From his point of view, such squabbling is a dead lossforgone
opportunities to extract taxes, tributes, soldiers and slaves. The second decline of violence was a civilizing process
that is best documented in Europe. Historical records show that between the late Middle Ages and the 20th century,

European countries saw a 10- to 50-fold decline in their rates of homicide. The numbers are consistent with narrative
histories of the brutality of life in the Middle Ages, when highwaymen made travel a risk to life and limb and
dinners were commonly enlivened by dagger attacks. So many people had their noses cut off that medieval medical
textbooks speculated about techniques for growing them back. Historians attribute this decline to the consolidation
of a patchwork of feudal territories into large kingdoms with centralized authority and an infrastructure of
commerce. Criminal justice was nationalized, and zero-sum plunder gave way to positive-sum trade. People
increasingly controlled their impulses and sought to cooperate with their neighbors. The third transition, sometimes
called the Humanitarian Revolution, took off with the Enlightenment. Governments and churches had long
maintained order by punishing nonconformists with mutilation, torture and gruesome forms of execution, such as
burning, breaking, disembowelment, impalement and sawing in half. The 18th century saw the widespread abolition

of judicial torture, including the famous prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" in the eighth amendment of

the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, many nations began to whittle down their list of capital crimes from the
hundreds (including poaching, sodomy, witchcraft and counterfeiting) to just murder and treason. And a growing
wave of countries abolished blood sports, dueling, witchhunts, religious persecution, absolute despotism and
slavery. The fourth major transition is the respite from major interstate war that we have seen since the end of World
War II. Historians sometimes refer to it as the Long Peace. Today we take it for granted that Italy and Austria will
not come to blows, nor will Britain and Russia. But centuries ago, the great powers were almost always at war, and
until quite recently, Western European countries tended to initiate two or three new wars every year. The clich that
the 20th century was "the most violent in history" ignores the second half of the century (and may not even be true
of the first half, if one calculates violent deaths as a proportion of the world's population). Though it's tempting to
attribute the Long Peace to nuclear deterrence, non-nuclear developed states have stopped fighting each other as

well. Political scientists point instead to the growth of democracy, trade and international organizationsall of
which, the statistical evidence shows, reduce the likelihood of conflict. They also credit the rising valuation of
human life over national grandeura hard-won lesson of two world wars. The fifth trend, which I call the New
Peace, involves war in the world as a whole, including developing nations. Since 1946, several organizations have
tracked the number of armed conflicts and their human toll world-wide. The bad news is that for several decades,
the decline of interstate wars was accompanied by a bulge of civil wars, as newly independent countries were led
by inept governments, challenged by insurgencies and armed by the cold war superpowers. The less bad news is
that civil wars tend to kill far fewer people than wars between states. And the best news is that, since the peak of

the cold war in the 1970s and '80s, organized conflicts of all kindscivil wars, genocides, repression by autocratic
governments, terrorist attackshave declined throughout the world, and their death tolls have declined even more
precipitously. The rate of documented direct deaths from political violence (war, terrorism, genocide and warlord
militias) in the past decade is an unprecedented few hundredths of a percentage point. Even if we multiplied that rate
to account for unrecorded deaths and the victims of war-caused disease and famine, it would not exceed 1%. The
most immediate cause of this New Peace was the demise of communism, which ended the proxy wars in the
developing world stoked by the superpowers and also discredited genocidal ideologies that had justified the
sacrifice of vast numbers of eggs to make a utopian omelet. Another contributor was the expansion of international
peacekeeping forces, which really do keep the peacenot always, but far more often than when adversaries are left
to fight to the bitter end. Finally, the postwar era has seen a cascade of "rights revolutions"a growing revulsion
against aggression on smaller scales. In the developed world, the civil rights movement obliterated lynchings and
lethal pogroms, and the women's-rights movement has helped to shrink the incidence of rape and the beating and
killing of wives and girlfriends. In recent decades, the movement for children's rights has significantly reduced rates
of spanking, bullying, paddling in schools, and physical and sexual abuse. And the campaign for gay rights has
forced governments in the developed world to repeal laws criminalizing homosexuality and has had some success
in reducing hate crimes against gay people. * * * * Why has violence declined so dramatically for so long? Is it
because violence has literally been bred out of us, leaving us more peaceful by nature? This seems unlikely.
Evolution has a speed limit measured in generations, and many of these declines have unfolded over decades or
even years. Toddlers continue to kick, bite and hit; little boys continue to play-fight; people of all ages continue to
snipe and bicker, and most of them continue to harbor violent fantasies and to enjoy violent entertainment. It's
more likely that human nature has always comprised inclinations toward violence and inclinations that counteract
themsuch as self-control, empathy, fairness and reasonwhat Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our
nature." Violence has declined because historical circumstances have increasingly favored our better angels. The
most obvious of these pacifying forces has been the state, with its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. A
disinterested judiciary and police can defuse the temptation of exploitative attack, inhibit the impulse for revenge
and circumvent the self-serving biases that make all parties to a dispute believe that they are on the side of the
angels. We see evidence of the pacifying effects of government in the way that rates of killing declined following

the expansion and consolidation of states in tribal societies and in medieval Europe. And we can watch the movie in
reverse when violence erupts in zones of anarchy, such as the Wild West, failed states and neighborhoods controlled
by mafias and street gangs, who can't call 911 or file a lawsuit to resolve their disputes but have to administer their
own rough justice. Another pacifying force has been commerce, a game in which everybody can win. As
technological progress allows the exchange of goods and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of
trading partners, other people become more valuable alive than dead. They switch from being targets of
demonization and dehumanization to potential partners in reciprocal altruism. For example, though the relationship
today between America and China is far from warm, we are unlikely to declare war on them or vice versa. Morality
aside, they make too much of our stuff, and we owe them too much money. A third peacemaker has been

cosmopolitanismthe expansion of people's parochial little worlds through literacy, mobility, education, science,
history, journalism and mass media. These forms of virtual reality can prompt people to take the perspective of
people unlike themselves and to expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them. These technologies have also
powered an expansion of rationality and objectivity in human affairs. People are now less likely to privilege their
own interests over those of others. They reflect more on the way they live and consider how they could be better off.
Violence is often reframed as a problem to be solved rather than as a contest to be won. We devote ever more of our

brainpower to guiding our better angels. It is probably no coincidence that the Humanitarian Revolution came on
the heels of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, that the Long Peace and rights revolutions coincided with
the electronic global village.

Our studies are comprehensive they account for the big

picture of structural violence
Jervis 11--Robert, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia
University, "Pinker the Prophet", Nov-December Issue of the National
Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/pinker-the-prophet-6072
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined [3] WITH THE United States fighting two wars, countries from Tunisia to Syria either in or on
the brink of intrastate conflicts, bloodshed continuing in Sudan and reports that suicide bombers might foil airport security by planting explosives within

Pinker tells us that we should be, that we are living in

the least violent era ever. Whats more, he makes a case that will be hard to refute. The
trends are not subtlemany of the changes involve an order of magnitude or more .
their bodies, it is hard to be cheerful. But Harvard psychologist Steven

Pinkers scope is enormous, ranging in time from

prehistory to today and covering wars (both international and civil), crime, torture, abuse of women and children,
and even cruelty to animals. This breadth is central becauseviolence in all of these domains has
declined sharply. Students of any one of these areas are familiar with a narrow slice of the data, but few have
stepped back to look at the whole picture. In fact, many scholarsand much of the educated
public simply deny the good news. But prehistoric graves and records from twentiethEven when his explanations do not fully convince, they are serious and well-grounded.

century hunter-gatherers reveal death rates due to warfare five to ten times that of modern
Europe, and the homicide rate in Western Europe from 1300 to today has dropped by a factor of
between ten and fifty. When we read that after conquering a city the ancient Greeks killed all the men and sold the women and children
into slavery, we tend to let the phrases pass over us as we move on to admire Greek poetry, plays and civilization. But this kind of slaughter was central to

contemporary attacks on
the Enlightenment and modernity are fundamentally misguided . Critics often argue
that material and technical progress has been achieved withoutor even at the cost of
moral improvement and human development. Quite the contrary, he argues; we are
enormously better than our ancestors in how we treat one another and in
our ability to work together to build better lives. To make such bold and far-reaching claims, one must
draw on an equally vast array of sources. And so Pinker does. The bibliography runs to over thirty pages set in
small type, covering studies from anthropology, archaeology, biology, history, political science, psychology and
sociology. With this range comes the obvious danger of superficiality. Has he understood all this material? Has he selected only those
the Greek way of life. Implicit throughout and explicit at the very end is Pinkers passionate belief that

sources that support his claims? Does he know the limits of the studies he draws on? I cannot answer these questions in all the fields, but in the
areas I do knowinternational relations and some psychologyhis knowledge holds up very well. With the typical insiders distrust of
interlopers, I was ready to catch him stacking the deck or twisting arguments and evidence about war. While he does miss
some nuances, these are not of major consequence. It is true that despite the enormous toll of

World Wars I and II, not only have there been relatively few massive bloody conflicts
since then (and an unprecedented period of peace among the major powers), but the trends going back many centuries reveal a
decline in the frequency of war, albeit not a steady one. The record on intrastate conflicts is muddier because definitions vary and histories are

most studies reveal a decline there as well.

incomplete, but
In the aftermath of the Cold War, civil wars broke out in
many areas, and some still rage (most obviously in Congo), but, contrary to expectations, this wave has subsided. In parallel, Pinker marshals multiple
sources using different methodologies to show that however much we may fear crime, throughout the world the danger is enormously less than it was
centuries ago. When we turn to torture, domestic violence against women, abuse of children and cruelty to animals, the progress over the past two
millennia is obvious. Here what is particularly interesting is not only the decline in the incidence of these behaviors but also that until recently they were

Pinkers argument holds up. Or, to

the burden is now on those who believe that violence has not declined to establish their case.

the norm in both the sense of being expected and of being approved. In all these diverse areas, then, I think

put it more cautiously,

(Whether our era sees new and more subtle forms of violence is a different question and I think would have to involve the stretching of this

We often scorn mere description, but here it is central. The factif it is

accepted as a factthat violence has declined so much in so many forms changes the way
we understand our era and the sweep of human history . It shows how much our behavior has changed and
concept.)

notions
of civilization and progress are not mere stories that we tell ourselves to justify our
that even if biology is destiny, destiny does not yield constant patterns. It also puts in perspective our current ills and shows that

lives.

3. Disaster detection and evacuation is not structurally racist

or exclusive alterative causes ensure people stay behind
Dahl 12 Health editor for NBCNews (Melissa, NBC News, Storm psychology:
Why do some people stay behind?, August 30 th,
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/30/13551209-storm-psychology-why-dosome-people-stay-behind?lite)//SP
Its the question so many of us have while watching news coverage of a hurricane
or tropical storm like Isaac: Who are these people who dont leave home even as an
angry storm is advancing and what are they thinking?! The short answer: For
some, the up-and-leaving idea isnt as easy as it sounds to those of us
watching from a safe and dry distance. Actually, a 2009 article published
in the journal Psychological Science sought to examine the reasons some
people wont evacuate, despite the urging or even mandates of city and
state officials, by asking a group who would know: Hurricane Katrina
survivors who weathered the storm at home. It seems like asking Why
didn't people leave? presumes that that's the best option for everyone to
make, says Hilary Bergsieker, who worked with Nicole Stephens, now of
Northwestern University, on the study. The fact is, many people lack the
resources to escape. Having no money, no mode of transportation and no
friends or family in safe places means no choice but to weather the storm .
In the case of Katrina, those who evacuated before the storm hit were
mostly white, mostly middle class; on the other hand, those who stayed
were mostly black, mostly working class. The leavers, as the
Psychological Science paper terms those who fled before the storm, had
privileges that they probably took for granted: more education, more
money, reliable access to transportation, social networks that extended
farther away from the hurricane-hit area, and more access to news reports
to warn them of the storms severity. "Middle- and upper-class Americans
are more geographically mobile and have more experience traveling
nationally and internationally. I think that the familiarity with moving or
traveling would contribute to the ability to make a plan for how to
evacuate, says Stephens, who is an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of
Management at Northwestern. "On the other hand, if you have spent most of your
life in the same community, then you would likely feel more attachment to your
home and feel less comfortable as well as less equipped to quickly uproot yourself
in response to evacuation orders." Even if a person does have the resources at
hand to make an escape, it might be unthinkable to leave behind a
tightknit community like those youd find in many parts of coastal
Louisiana and Mississippi. There's sort of the physical resources factor, but
there's also the psychological factors. That's your world; that's all you know,
says Bergsieker, who is now an assistant professor of psychology at the University
of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. And, as the thinking goes, if your neighbor tells
you hes staying, then you might stay, too after all, if something
happened to him, who would be there to take care of him if you leave?
Some of the 79 Katrina survivors interviewed in the 2009 study did have
the resources to go, but they didnt have the heart to leave. Ariella Cohen
moved to New Orleans in 2007, so she wasnt there when Katrina hit. But in 2008,
when Hurricane Gustav started moving toward her city, she decided to stick it out,

despite the city's mandatory evacuation order. I had friends who had stayed
through Katrina, and I had heard all their stories about it, and so I think I also
inherited all their jadedness, too, says Cohen, who wrote about her Gustav close
encounter for the website Next American City. You know, just kind of that New
Orleanian attitude of, Whatever! Were going to stay here. Do you want another
beer? On a more serious note, her rationale for staying was: 'Im young, Im
able-bodied and relatively fit. What if someone older and weaker needs
me?' I was, like, 27 at the time, so I was young and strong, and I would be able to
help people if the time came, says Choen, now 31, who lives in Philadelphia, where
she works as an editor for the same site that published her 2008 essay. Mistrust of
outsiders as in, people who arent from your community who are claiming to know
more than you do about your own home by telling you to leave it can play a part,
too. This is where you've always been your whole life, and suddenly
people on the radio are telling you you have to leave? That may seem like
a much more dangerous choice than to stay with people from your church,
or people from your block, Bergsieker says. Besides, those who live in a
hurricane-prone area hear these warnings all the time. It can be easy to
stay in denial about an impending storms ferocity when the local news
station has cried hurricane so many times before. (Sometimes that tack pans out:
In Cohens lucky case, Gustav bypassed New Orleans.)

4. Plan cant solve- public transportation deficits were the

main reason for the displacement of minorities
Litman 05(Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, September 20 2005,
da: july 18 2014, Lessons From Katrina What A Major Disaster Can Teach
Transportation Planners,
http://www.torontowestcaer.com/speakers_files/louislaferriere/14%20-%20VTPI
%20Transport%20Lessons%20of%20Katrina.pdf,PS)
However, there was no effective plan to evacuate residents who rely on
public transportation. In an article titled Planning for the Evacuation of New
Orleans published in the Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal (Wolshon,
2002, p. 45) the author explains, Of the 1.4 million inhabitants in the highthreat areas, it is assumed only approximately 60 percent of the
population or about 850,000 people will want, or be able, to leave the city.
The reasons are numerous. Although the primary reasons are a lack of
transportation (it is estimated that about 200,000 to 300,000 people do not have
access to reliable personal transportation), an unwillingness to leave homes and
property (estimated to be at least 100,000 people) and a lack of outbound
roadway capacity. This indicates that public officials were aware of and
willing to accept significant risk to hundreds of thousands of residents
unable to evacuate because they lacked transportation. The little effort that
was made to assist non-drivers was careless and incompetent. According to
accounts, public officials provided little guidance to people without
personal vehicles, and when asked, they simply directed them to the
Superdome (Renne, 2005), although it had insufficient water, food, medical
care and security. This lead to a medical and humanitarian crisis. New
Orleans officials were aware of the risks facing transit-dependent residents. These
had been described in recent articles in Scientific American (Fischett, 2001) and
National Geographic (Bourne, 2004) magazines, and from previous experience

(see box on the next page). A July 2004 simulation of a Category 3 Hurricane Pam
on the southern Louisiana coast by the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood
of New Orleans. City and regional emergency plans describe likely problems in
detail (Louisiana, 2000; New Orleans, 2005). The City of New Orleans
Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan (New Orleans, 2005) states: The city
of New Orleans will utilize all available resources to quickly and safely evacuate
threatened areas. ...Special arrangements will be made to evacuate persons unable
to transport themselves or who require specific life-saving assistance. Additional
personnel will be recruited to assist in evacuation procedure as needed.
...Approximately 100,000 citizens of New Orleans do not have means of personal
transportation.

5. Plan insufficient to solve NOAAs relegation of the PTWC to

secondary status jeopardizes the whole system
PEER 14 Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a national
alliance of local state and federal resource professionals (TSUNAMI WARNING
RELIABILITY AT RISK IN STEALTH REORGANIZATION, January 22nd,
http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2014/01/22/tsunami-warning-reliability-atrisk-in-stealth-reorganization/) //SP
The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has quietly elevated
its tsunami warning center in Alaska by relegating its Pacific Tsunami
Warning Center in Hawaii to secondary status, according to documents posted
today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Experts warn,
however, that this move may compromise the effectiveness of the entire
tsunami warning system, both internationally and domestically. In an
August 8, 2013 memo to acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan, Laura
Furgione, Deputy Director of NOAAs National Weather Service (NWS), declares we
have officially changed the name of the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
to the National Tsunami Warning Center to handle all tsunami warnings for the
contiguous US Coastline. The memo briefly discusses the after-the-fact
communication strategy including socializing with the stakeholder Congressional
delegations. According to the memo, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC
has been continuously operating in Oahu since 1949) is left to focus on executing
NOAAs international tsunami warning responsibilities (with the exception of Hawaii
and the Pacific Territories) and eventually would take over tsunami alert
responsibilities for Puerto Rico and the USVI [Virgin Islands]. While the memo
describes the move as reducing confusion across the NOAA/NWS Tsunami Program
stakeholders and the general public by better defining the roles of the two centers,
experts within the agency point out that it has actually increased confusion for
some PTWC stakeholders who now wonder if they must obtain official tsunami
information from Alaska. Moreover, it muddles PTWCs role in handling tsunamis
generated in international waters striking the U.S., such as the Japan tsunami of
2011. In addition By encouraging competition rather than collaboration
between the warning centers, NOAA is creating a race to the bottom by
rewarding speed over accuracy; Since the two centers are no longer coequal partners, PTWC cannot act as the hot-spare backup for the NTWC
as it had previously; and The plan gives short shrift to PTWCs
international responsibilities and completely ignores its responsibilities to

the U.S. military and State Department. Neither of the Tsunami Warning
Centers Directors have been directly part of ongoing, internal NWS discussions
planning the reorganization. Notably, no one in the NWS national leadership,
including the Tsunami Program Director, has ever worked at a tsunami warning
center. There should be a broader debate before putting all our tsunami
warning eggs in one basket, urged PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch,
noting that the PTWCs responsibilities cover two-thirds of the planets
coastlines yet the entire tsunami program staff constitutes 1% of N ational
Weather Service personnel. Tsunami hazard detection is a highly
specialized field and its experts should be at the table when decisions
affecting operations are made. This latest move continues a pattern of
skewed and ruinous treatment of the two tsunami warning centers. The
Alaska center has historically had greater levels of funding, staffing and IT
support than PTWC while PTWC has suffered critical equipment failures for
lack of support.

6. The status quo solves only developing countries are at

risk
Foster et al. 05 CSA Editor, Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts,
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, Dual B.A., English and International Relations,
Boston University, M.A., International Relations, San Francisco State University, M.A.,
Political Science, Rice University (Tanya, Tsunamis and the International Response:
Economic, Social and Environmental Dimensions, Sustainability: Science, Practice,
and Policy, http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/tsunami/overview.php)//SP
In addition to local redevelopment efforts, we as a global society must prepare
for natural disasters at this new level. This is especially important now as
global economic interdependence increases and disasters in one region
can have implications across the world. Preparation must include
monitoring and detection technologies intricately coupled with
communication and warning systems to prevent the loss of life and property in the
future. Effective warning systems can save thousands of lives and greatly reduce
the impact of disasters and the need for such a massive aid mobilization.
International Warning Systems
The existence of a successful tsunami warning system in the Pacific region
has led to the suggestion that a South Asian--or even global--warning system
should be developed. Currently, vulnerable regions in the United States,
particularly the Pacific Northwest, utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
to integrate natural, socioeconomic, and disaster information in order to
develop holistic mitigation and preparedness strategies.40 Communities
that analyze risks and communicate warnings effectively are able to
mitigate damages better than those that do not implement these
precautions. Applying the underlying technology to South Asia or magnifying
it to a global scale would require international coordination on a variety
of levels. Politically, governments would have to come to a negotiated agreement
regarding such a system, and its funding, staffing, and rules of operation.
Practically, a warning system would require the international coordination
of experts and the physical installation and maintenance of equipment.

There are numerous instances of the international community attempting

to mitigate the effects of disasters through warning systems. The volatile
Pacific region has tsunami, earthquake, and volcanic monitoring, while the African
community has moved to prevent and manage its own natural and human
disasters.41 However, the development and implementation of such a
system requires more than planning and technical expertise; it requires a
political commitment from national and international leadership and the
development of specific policies relating to the system and its
operations.42 Global public sentiment seems to be pushing politicians toward the
development of such a system, but if the suggestion is not acted upon
immediately, while public interest is strong, the project may be caught
up in the quagmire of international politics. The funding for an international
warning system would require a financial outlay from many developing nations in
order to combat an extremely rare natural disaster. It is possible that the cost could
become prohibitive to these nations unless additional funding sources are located.
The development of warning systems lags behind funding of aid agencies. Charities
respond to an immediate human need for disaster relief,43 while long-term planning
tends to involve government agencies and meetings.
An important priority for the international community is the identification of
areas most at risk from flooding by a tsunami. Production of inundation
maps will enable long-term planning for rebuilding and siting of new
communities that would be at low risk and for required coastal defense
works. Inundation maps are created by running earthquake, landslide, and volcanic
eruption simulations to see whether tsunamis are produced; the combination of
these results with detailed topographic measurements of the sea bed and coastal
zones will indicate degree of inland penetration and flooding. However, such
topographic maps are currently nonexistent for the Indian Ocean region,
and detailed sea bed imaging is yet to be carried out.

7. Chance of a tsunami from the affirmative depiction of where

is slim and status quo solves
Nealon, 11 contributor for Daily Press (Corey, Daily Press, Scientists say
Atlantic tsunami "highly unlikely", March 11th, http://articles.dailypress.com/201103-11/news/dp-nws-tsunami-east-coast-20110311_1_atlantic-tsunami-continentalshelf-landslides) //jk
Could a tsunami strike the East Coast? Scientists say yes, but the chances
are slim. It is "highly unlikely" that Virginia or the rest of Atlantic Seaboard
will experience anything like the swift, destructive waves that pummeled
Japan on Friday, said Christopher "Chuck" Bailey, a geology professor at the College
of William and Mary. The reason: unlike earthquake hotspots, such as the Pacific
or Caribbean, plate tectonics below the Atlantic Ocean move apart not
together. The phenomenon keeps the Atlantic, despite being the world's
second largest body of water, relatively free of earthquakes. Tsunamis are
sea waves, sometimes measuring hundreds of miles long, created by earthquakes,
landslides, or volcanic eruptions. Their height can be a few inches or tens of feet.
There have been at least nine confirmed in the Atlantic since 1755, according to the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The last occurred in 1964. "The
Atlantic is by no means free of big earthquakes in the past," said John Boon, a
Virginia Institute of Marine Science professor, who like Bailey said a tsunami isn't
likely to hit the East Coast. A group of scientists last decade found cracks on the
ocean floor near the edge of the outer continental shelf, an extension of the North
American continent that juts out about 75 miles from shore. There is a 15,000 to
20,000 foot drop-off beyond the continental shelf. Scientists said built-up
natural gas caused the cracks and could, theoretically, cause a massive
underwater landslide. Such an event could trigger a tsunami 2- to 20-feet
tall, according to studies published by the scientists. Nothing like that has
occurred in thousands, or perhaps millions, of years, Bailey said. Also, it is
unlikely that seismic testing for oil and natural gas or drilling for the fossil fuels
would cause landslides at the continental shelf, he said. Gov. Bob McDonnell hopes
to open Virginia's coast to offshore drilling, but the move was blocked by President
Barack Obama in the wake of last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Another possible
threat is the Canary Islands, located off the coast of northwest Africa. A volcanic
eruption on the Spanish archipelago could lead to a landslide-causing tsunami that
hits several continents, according to research from Steven Ward, a professor at the
University of California in Santa Cruz. In such a scenario, the East Coast would
have hours of advanced warning, Boon said. Also, ocean buoys and
satellites could track the wave's progress as it crossed the Atlantic.

8. Other tsunami programs are solving now the plan is

unnecessary
Cantwell 12 Unites States Senator for Washington (Maria, Press Release of
Senator Cantwell, March 10th, http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?
id=336265)//SP
Since the Tsunami Warning and Education Acts (TWEA) (P.L. 109-424) passage
in 2006, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources Geology
and Earth Resources Division has worked closely with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, Washington state emergency
management agencies, and local communities to better prepare
Washingtons coastal communities for tsunami impacts.
With the help of NOAAs tsunami hazard programs, Washington has made real
progress in making our communities safer, said Peter Goldmark, Washington State
Public Lands Commissioner. A strong warning system, along with a
commitment to state and local disaster preparedness are the keys to
keeping them that way.
Since the passage of this legislation, many communities in Washington state are
now tsunami ready, including: Aberdeen, Clallam County, Grays Harbor County,
Ilwaco, Jefferson County, Long Beach, Ocean Shores, Pacific County, Quinault Indian
Nation, Raymond, Shoalwater Bay Tribe, and South Bend. The regional network
and coordination among coastal states has been significantly
strengthened as well as a result of this legislation.
In June of 2006, an earthquake off California triggered a tsunami warning
from Baja, Mexico to Vancouver, Canada. However, emergency warning sirens
in La Push and Neah Bay did not go off automatically as they were supposed to. In
La Push, police had to manually turn on the alarms to evacuate 600 coastal
residents to nearby bluffs. In Neah Bay, the sirens could not be turned on manually;

instead, local police and U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials had to go door-to-door to
evacuate residents.
Following this incident, Cantwell fought to secure $443,000 for the Washington
State Emergency Management Division (EMD) to install newer and better tsunami
warning sirens in more coastal communities. The sirens were installed in Long
Beach, Ocean Shores,Ilwaco, Tokeland, Tahola, Clallam Bay, Port Angeles, and Point
Hudson near Port Townsend.
NOAA has also led on development of tsunami flooding forecast efforts,
including work done at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
(PMEL). These efforts involve working with U.S. coastal states to develop
tsunami inundation maps for evacuation planning in communities
including five in Washington state. PMEL has also developed real time flooding
forecast capabilities to include 75 communities along U.S. coastline by the
end of 2012.
The DART buoys helped notify Washington state coastal communities last
year after the devastating tsunami was detected off the coast of Japan.
Approximately 25 minutes after last years earthquake off the coast of Japan, the
approaching tsunami was recorded by a DART buoy off the east coast of Japan.
NOAA was able to use that information to determine when and where waves would
arrive in Hawaii and the continental United States. As a result of NOAAs tsunami
warnings, targeted coastal evacuations in Hawaii and along the U.S. West Coast
were ordered. In Washington state, limited evacuations occurred in Pacific and
Grays Harbor counties during the night. By morning, more than 600 people from
both counties had left the tsunami danger zone.
The high-tech DART buoys help first responders and emergency
management officials focus their evacuation efforts only in those
communities in the tsunamis path, which prevents the unnecessary
disruption of coastal commerce. Washington states coastal economy supports
165,000 jobs and produces $10.8 billion in economic activity each year. Tourism is
Washington states fourth largest industry.
Makah Chairman Micah McCarty applauded Cantwells efforts to use technology to
protect and preserve lives: "This effort not only protects our town but it provides
increased tsunami readiness and protection for our visitors as well. After the great
Alaska earthquake in 1964, our remote village needlessly evacuated our entire town
during the 1960s and 1970s based on reports of earthquakes. Now, with the DART
system we use technology to evaluate tsunami threat and evacuate only when
necessary."
In 1994, a false alarm triggered an evacuation in Hawaii that cost the island
community an estimated $30 million dollars in lost revenues. In 2003, when a 7.8magnitude quake hit off the coast of Alaskas Aleutian Islands, a tsunami warning
was issued for Hawaii. Using the DART system, officials realized that the
earthquake wouldnt trigger a deadly tsunami and were able to withdraw
a tsunami warning within an hour. According to the Associated Press,
withdrawing this tsunami warning saved over $68 million dollars.