That time spent studying the oceans is better spent elsewhere

We live in a world of crisis. There is widespread violence, political scandals, climate catastrophes, terrifying plagues, and inefficient rail networks around the world to name but a few. It would be difficult to deny that there are real, immediate threats we face. Challenges to our everyday life, and in some cases, very survival.

In such a scenario, we believe it is shameful for some of the best and the brightest minds to study oceanography, which is of little relevance to most people. Of course, people should have the right to study whatever they wish, but it is my contention in this debate that such people ought to choose to study another pursuit, leaving oceanography study to wealthy film-making tycoons instead.

It is my contention in this debate that the purpose of science is to improve our lives and the lives of others. Let me justify that.

First we recognize the principle that people are the most important thing in this world. This is the foundation of the principle of reciprocity, whereby mutual empathy for other people is encouraged (the golden rule prevalent through many cultures). Of course scientific advances are not generally exclusive to an individual, but generalizable to a population. The best use of human time in the context of science, therefore, attends to the most important things in human life, which is (unsurprisingly) human lives, whether the ends be self-serving or, ideally, philanthropic. Such moral constraints are inherent in reverse form to nearly every scientific body in the world, as the reason why scientists must not harm people through their research (at least in the modern age, although historically this idea can be dated back to the very origins of science with men like Aristotle and Hippocrates).

Even supposing that this principle did not hold, we also recognize that science is a means to an end. There is a fixed goal, dictated by a research question or testable hypothesis, that scientists aim to learn more about, and science helps them do that. The value that may be provided by an end is itself testable. There is much more value in researching cancer cures for example, than there is in researching how long you can stand on one leg on average, because it has a much wider application - of course, ultimately as always, demand and supply set the scope for research value. Therefore scientists should pick more high-value research projects. The trouble is, oceanography is relatively difficult to generalize. What's true in the ocean is rarely true elsewhere. This limits the value of this research significantly. There's also no particularly pressing need to study oceanography right now. With that in mind oceanography is a relatively low-value scientific undertaking.

It is therefore most consistent with the goals and purposes of science to study something else when you could be studying oceanography. In particular, dealing with other fields that have serious direct impacts on human lives.

The ocean represents 70% of earth's surface. It is home to known and unknown natural resources, mineral deposits, animals, plants, and much more that has yet to be discovered. 

Through scientific studies, that can translate into new sources of economic productivity, alternative fuels, medicines, and food.

Here is the most important contention. 97% of earth's water comes from the ocean. Ocean water has allowed prosperous cities and farmland to exist in coastal areas. Fishing, ocean farming, and good crop yields provided from good soil, (as a direct result of being near the ocean) have for a long time fed and nurtured humanity. This alone makes it imperative that we continue to study earth's most useful and yet mysterious entities, the oceans. 

Relative to oceanography, medical fields of study have proven less effective at making scientific breakthroughs, despite having larger budgets. It doesn't matter how much money is poured on cancer research, alzheimer's research, and schizophrenia research, there has been little progress made by scientists. 

The ocean is thought to have millions of things with potential medicinal properties. The answers to many of the world's foremost medical problems can be found within the oceans. This even includes cures to obscure diseases, conditions, and defects. 

A couple years ago, a new crystal mineral with a liquid substance at its core, was found in mass quantities in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists tested this newly discovered mineral, and found it could potentially function as a high quality fuel. The best part was that this mineral is believed to be in higher quantity than all of the worlds oil reserves combined. A lack of research and understanding on how to extract and harness these minerals from the ocean have thus far prevented this new source of energy and fuel from progressing. 

That is just one incredibly valuable natural resource believed to be in the ocean. Scientists have for a long time claimed that there are tens of thousands of undiscovered  minerals and fuel sources in our northern waters. 

Lately the ocean has also become the new frontier in industry. With big corporations actively interfering with the chemical properties and natural currents of the ocean, Ocenographers are needed more than ever to analyze the long term effects this will have on the plant.

I hope all of you judges can see the value in ocean study. I aim to convince you guys further of the scholarly merits and opportunities that are available in the oceans, and then you can all decide on your own whether you feel ocean study is worthwhile at this point in time. 

Research is organized, in the world of science, primarily by research questions, also known as hypotheses. I had thought this common knowledge, but after a brief cross-examination exchange, considered it valuable to clarify the point. Individual studies may make discoveries in a variety of fields. It is the overall aim of the study itself, however, as defined by the research question, that determines what the study is primarily studying. For example, studying electricity is not oceanology because the research question is not directly relevant to the ocean. Even studying offshore wind farms is not inherently oceanology, unless you are studying how that wind farm affects the ocean. The research question must directly ask something about the ocean to be considered oceanology, for example, why do ocean currents exist, or how deep is the deepest point in the Atlantic?

These kinds of questions have something in common that I pointed out in my opening case: they hold little relevance to our day to day lives. There might be a human curiosity about the strange and frankly weird world beneath the waves, but the question is whether this is really the best use of human scientific minds and energy? As research investments go, such "curiosity only" research is not so fundamental to what is actually valuable or moral for us to pursue. I hope that clarifies any lingering doubts about what "studying the oceans" actually entails - we're talking people who are actually interested primarily in oceans, not all things that may be tangentially related in some obscure way to oceans.

Let me now address, briefly, the case presented by side negative.

Con does not contend the truth of either of my arguments. Con rather supposes that oceanography is at least as valuable as other sciences to people - that there is no science more anthropocentric than oceanography, or at least that other sciences are equal to it in terms of its merit for human society. As such con only has one argument: that oceanography is super relevant to human life.

We might compare it, then, to some of the examples I have raised so far, such as climatology or pathology. Whereas global warming will destroy many countries, and diseases could kill millions of people, it stands to reason to question what exactly the harm is of not studying oceanography. Does the neg suppose octopuses are going to invade us all? Probably not. Instead con has chosen to focus exclusively on the benefits of oceanographic research.

First neg claims that the ocean generates food. Great. There is no need to study it further because we already have our food. Neg needs to actually establish the benefit to further ocean study, and not appeal to things we already know about the ocean. Perhaps it is my opponent's own lack of understanding that has led him to this mistaken belief, because ocean water does not fertilize nearby soil. It's too salty to fertilize anything, which is why you can have deserts immediately adjacent to the ocean. The main source of fertility is from rainwater, springs etc. Often, being on lower ground and near natural springs, coastal land happens to be quite fertile, but we know that the ocean is not responsible for that. It's this kind of fundamental scientific misunderstanding that permeates my opponent's case and artificially inflates the value he ascribes to ocean research. To give another example - yes, 97% of the world's water is in the ocean, but that does not equate to 97% of the water that is actually useful to people. Since he conceded my case that all research should be relevant to exclusively human ends, this does not follow.

Second, neg claims the ocean has potential medicinal properties. I should note here that there have been numerous scientific breakthroughs in the realm of preventing and curing all forms of disease. I totally reject the premise that pathologists have been lazy in their work. Cancer research has meant that practically every cancer is now curable, and not too long ago cancer was thought to be unstoppable. Most modern cancer research is in finding more efficient cures, which goes to show the progress made in that field. Alzheimer's, while not cured, is certainly much better understood, and modern drugs are able to delay most of the negative effects considerably. Numerous drugs to reverse it entirely are currently in trials, some of which have shown real promise. Schizophrenia likewise has evolved somewhat from the mental hospitals of old, to now being much better understood - both with anti-psychotic drugs as well as in terms of counselling and management of seriously affected individuals, to the point that there are now many documented cases of people recovering completely. Practically none of the advancements that brought about these great leaps forward in the treatment of horrible conditions were brought about by oceanography. They were brought about by carefully examining not the ocean, but the diseases and the people who had them.

Not only is this hardly "little progress", but appealing to "potential" cures if only something were studied further is a weak argument at best. Even if there is some merit to it, it would be better to demonstrate such cures in isolation of their original ocean context. A nutritionist need not study where fish oil comes from to ascertain its benefits to human health, to give the example from cross-examination. The same is true of undiscovered minerals and fuels.

Con also appeals to "a new crystal mineral with a liquid substance at its core". Strange he didn't substantiate this much, as he could have named the mineral in question. I did a number of searches through key journals, as well as Google Scholar, and was unable to find the study. Mineral fuels are generally either convertible to a burnt substance somehow, making it a poor oil replacement, or only provide very small amounts of energy, like rocks of the quartz family. Study into renewable energy sources, for example, makes much more sense long-term, as well as potentially clean energy like nuclear.

Finally my opponent appeals to the long term environmental damage large corporations may or may not be causing the ocean, in terms of its long-term effects. I suspect we already know enough about the ocean to know that we can cause long term damage to it, and need to care for it. We don't need scientists to do a complicated investigation to realize dumping poisons into the sea might be harmful! That's common sense, and backed up by research we have already. The current fate of the Great Coral Reef in Australia is a good example of this. We understand what's happening perfectly. The roadblock is not in science but in policy, convincing governments to put an end to corporate irresponsibility.

Even if these examples did hold, they are not representative of oceanographic research as a whole. These are isolated instances that only prove that value can come from unexpected sources (if they were accurate), not that the ocean is the optimum resource of value for us to study. It would still be preferential for us, morally and pragmatically, to study things more directly relevant to people.

The resolution is affirmed.

It is untrue that two scientific fields cannot work together synonymously. That is mostly what is happening today. Oceanologists discover something that may be useful to scientists from another field, so they work together. If you do not have people studying the oceans though, then all of those other scientific fields will have huge gaps in their research. A big part of science is discovery, and if no one is looking to discover the wonders of the ocean, then we will never reach some very amazing revelations about our home, the earth.

During the cross examination, I provided a definition which I believe is the most true description of Oceanology. 

By this definition, the study of the oceans is immense and unlimited. 

The opposition claims climatology is more important that oceanography. Here is a fun fact. Most of the insights we have on climate science come from the oceans, and were developed upon using the research of oceanographers. That is one example of the tremendous influences oceanographers have on the developments of other scientific fields. 

I apologize for not sharing the name of the natural resource I referred to in the last round. It is called methane clathrate, or fire ice, and it is a methane substance that is found in hard crystals buried under the ocean floor. Like I said before, there is more of this fuel in the Gulf of Mexico than oil in the entire world. The reason it was never extracted, was due to a lack of knowledge on deep ocean mining. Guess what kind of people specialize in extracting resources from the oceans? That's right, oceanographers! 

That is an image of methane clathrate. The difficulty in discovering ways to extract the methane from the crystals is immense, but oceanographers have already came up with theories on how. The clathrate gun hypothesis, is a theory devised by oceanographers, which gives insight on how to extract fire ice.

Guess what? This theory also provides major insights on global warming. Oceanography is really a badass scientific field. 

The opposition asserts that we already know enough about the environmental effects corporations are having on the ocean. The truth is, we do not have nearly enough knowledge. We are talking about messing with the tectonic plates that hold the world together, the currents that fertilize all the farms in the world, and the supplies of seafood which feed entire nations. I'd say it is imperative to humanity's very survival that we make sure we know every single detail about the oceans, since all life on earth is dependent on the ocean. 

That is what it really comes down to. All life on earth is dependent on the ocean. It is just as important that the oceans keep working properly, as it is that the sun keeps shining.  This is something we have known for centuries. There is no sanity in abandoning the study of one of our most precious resources for more near-sighted pursuits. 

In order to support his unorthodox case, con has had to resort to claiming that ocean science is essentially the answer to life, the universe and everything. In fact, as I pointed out in my second round, ocean science is very specifically defined as being limited to the goal of studying the ocean. It is this goal that I'm attacking, not every discovery that might in theory be made by studying the ocean. The claims that my opponent has made in this debate so far, however, are largely nothing short of pseudoscience. It takes a lot of guts to claim ocean science will cure more cancer than cancer research, for example, and this kind of a claim is not in any way supported by the evidence. If you want to study cancer, or any other anthropological science, look at cancer, not tides. Want to study people, study people. Saying the study of oceans is literally unlimited means you are conflating ocean science with every other science. If studying anything is studying the ocean then my opponent is attempting to twist the topic into a tautology. Regardless it's not his to define. Every study in history has a finite limit to its immediate usefulness. Nobody became a literal god after Einstein discovered relativity, or anything else. Further, con never told us why this applies to ocean science, and not any other science.

Still side negative has not engaged in this debate with either of my two key substantive arguments. He has completely conceded the main point of my case, which is that science should be focused not on curiosity but on tackling the major threats faced by humanity today. I talked about disease and climate change as representative examples.

Remember, I'm not trying to say we should not study oceanography. I'm simply saying we should prefer studying other sciences at this time. Con has tried to make my case into some claim that we should abandon oceanographic study, when this has never been in either the resolution or my contentions. Nor has con raised any argument for why this should be necessarily the case. He says lines like "if you do not have people studying the oceans", which is not comparative. Refer to round one for more details.

Let us concentrate then on the case that con did make, ignoring those non-substantive assertions that the ocean is some kind of magic means to discover anything. Bear in mind also that I raised a substantive rebuttal point, and that is that there is no harm in NOT studying the ocean - I thought my line about octopuses invading the earth would have sparked fear in my opponent with how deeply he seems to revere and worship the seas, but apparently not. There's nothing he said in reply at all, so we can safely assume that studying other fields is completely harmless. Failing to study something like pathology has an immediate harm, in that millions would be at risk from novel diseases.

Instead we have some fun examples from con of random things the ocean has discovered. Let's talk about them, because as in round 2 they demonstrate how terribly misinformed my opponent is about the fundamentals of science.

I kinda called it on methane clathrate - the active ingredient here, so to speak, is methane. Methane can be burnt as a fossil fuel that's many orders of magnitude more deadly for the environment than coal. It's exactly the kind of fuel scientists are trying to get rid of. You don't need to use ocean methane for that - there's plenty around in landfills, coal mines, swamps, and manure, among other places. And the reason it was never extracted was never because of a lack of knowledge about deep ocean mining, but rather because it's an absurdly poor source of fuel. Environmentalists even have a name for it - "the clathrate gun" my opponent referred to. It has nothing to do with extraction. It is the general belief by serious scientists that if the methane clathrate in the ocean were to be released, the world would immediately go out of control climate-wise. And it wasn't devised by oceanographers either, but by the gas industry (methane clathrate being a wasteful by-product of natural gas processing) who wanted to profit off their waste, so funded studies which unfortunately proved their waste was even more wasteful than was previously thought.

There's also a second reason it was never extracted - it's not densely packed like oil, but sparsely distributed over a wide distance. We could certainly mine it, it was just insanely uneconomical to do so. Oh, and it wasn't discovered recently at all. Scientists have known about it in various ways for centuries and people proposed it as a fuel in the 90s, which is a long time ago in science terms. And finally methane clathrate is not a crystal, even though it shares some properties, nor does it have a liquid core, the core being a gas.

This had nothing to do with global warming because everyone was already well aware methane sucks for the environment. We knew that by studying volcanoes, but we could also have studied landfills, a cow's paddock, or human farts, all of which contain a good amount of methane for studying.

My opponent fails to mention anything we specifically do not know about the ocean that is still important. He clings to this belief that ocean currents fertilize all the world's farms - as I said in the previous round, this doesn't even make sense intuitively. Trying sprinkling salt water on your garden and you won't find it especially fertile. He claims humans are messing with tectonic plates, which all the research says we're not, and that tectonic plates hold the world together, which they don't (that honor goes to a well-known force called "gravity"). We already have fish stocks and quotas. Honestly everything he's saying is, at this point, irrelevant.

 I will use the final round as a reply speech.

This debate is about whether the oceans are worthwhile to study, relative to other fields of science. To rephrase, this debate is about whether the current level of study into the oceans is a waste of time. 

Here is a quick review of how the oceans benefit our survival...