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White House Approves Sonic Cannons For Atlantic Energy Exploration
An anonymous reader writes: The White House on Friday gave final approval to allow the use of sonic cannons in finding energy deposits underneath the ocean floor on the U.S. Atlantic seaboard. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says that finding energy resources off the Atlantic seaboard "could generate thousands of jobs, but has also acknowledged that the process will harm sea creatures." Sonic cannons "fire sound waves 100 times louder than a jet engine." Mammals such as whales and dolphins that communicate through sound will most likely be affected, but scientists aren't sure to what extent. They also aren't sure how the cannons will affect fish and other sea creatures or how any physiological effects on them may impact the fishing industries of the U.S. and the other countries who rely on seafood that migrate into and out of the Atlantic Ocean.
Fuck the earth, we do what we want!
Can they give "warning shots" for some time period ahead of time to clear the area? Can they definitively detect whether any large mammals are in the vicinity before giving the big blasts?
:(
Actually, even if they can, this sounds really bad, no pun intended.
Did you forget that Obama is a democrat?
I've heard a geologist speak of doing this in the Mediterranean. I would hope the experience would allow them to do more than speculate about the effects on animals.
Did you forget that Obama is a democrat?
Since he's maintained virtually every policy of the Cheney Administration, I'd say he's a DINO.
This is just disgusting news
I don't care what they're supposed to be used for. They may be civilization's last hope of controlling my children.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I wonder how loud they are compared with underwater explosions, volcanoes and seaquakes?
Mankind needs energy. The sea creatures will...adapt.
Providing jobs means absolutely nothing nor does the profit of business. Anything that does harm to the land or oceans should be a felony. People come and go. The land and the oceans must exist for all people in all generations. Our needs are simply not a consideration. The horror of anything in the Arctic or extreme north is even worse as when accidents occur we have no ability to restore or mitigate a disaster.
They know that above all the oil must flow. Without the oil that came from the fracking boom oil would probably be at $150/barrel or higher. Without flowing oil the economy suffers (many past recessions were precipitated by high oil prices), the common man starts to get irritated at higher food prices, less disposable income.. for those that had disposable income to start with. The house of cards starts to sway even more.
Cheap oil is the real bread and circus that keeps the masses subdued. Some dead whales and dolphins isn't even a consideration.
When sonar is used, it can create sound pressure levels of 140dB 300 miles from the source . The sound is so excruciating that whales will surface too fast and get the bends, and/or beach themselves, just to escape the sound.
Yup, let's rape our irreplaceable planet some more while torturing innocent, intelligent creatures. After all, they aren't human, and our comfort, convenience, and entertainment are so much more important than their lives.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It's a pretty safe bet that they don't. Even if it harms the fishing industry, they don't have more lobbyists than the energy companies.
1) Fish Deafness Specialist
2) Hearing Aid Designer for Dolphins
3) Bass Boosting Headphone Maker for Bass
4) ASL Teachers for Octopi
5) Jellyfish Mending Seamstress
6) Aquatic PTSD Therapist
7) Exploding Whale Cleanup Crew
That makes all democrats that voted him in for a second term DINOs...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This will create a Sharknado, won't it?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
get that nonsense out of your head. the ones with Republicans and Democrats in their pockets rule your world. hint, the seat of power in the USA isn't Washington DC, it is New York
... short. If they just blast away continuously for days that might be an issue. But if they do it for an hour or so every day that probably won't matter.
Think of it like the noisy neighbor... if they have a loud phone conversation or violent sex or blast party music for a couple hours every day... it probably won't be a literal threat to your health. It might be annoying but you're not going to get ill or die or something.
But if someone does it to you every day all day for days on end... then yeah... you might have a physiological reaction.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
whales don't shriek, they are very low frequency sources
If 180 dB is 1 lb, the 235 dB is 0.155 kiloton not 31 megaton. I bet engineers could do something like that for a specific pulse of short duration.
right, because the alternative would have been so much better... I'm sure Republican's would have objected to this if it harmed sea creatures.......
Ahhh, so Dinos are totally without blame because the other party woulda done it?
The senate, the Oval office, all controlled by Dinos - but it's Bush's fault...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Just because they don't have exact figures, doesn't mean they don't know the outcome. They've already seen the effects our underwater noise making with naval craft and underwater military technology has had. But hey, as long as they can say "we don't know exactly100% for sure" it's A-OK, because the US needs jobs. And so the self-proclaimed "most transparent", "pro middle-class", "pro environment", "anti-lobbyist" President in History® gives BP, Shell and Exxon the OK to drive aquatic mammals into killing themselves and to suffer social separation because that's EXACTLY what they already know happens when we bombard the ocean with sonic disturbances. They just don' t know HOW MUCH WORSE it will be. just that it will be worse.
So, in Brussels there is a office to subsidize food production and another to destroy the food surplus according to Minister Hacker. Now we will have oil spills to destroy all the effort put into restoring the Chesapeake Bay. It used to be funny on TV, but in real life it just looks stupid.
- Jobs in danger
- Jobs created
- Freedom
- Security
Look who is talking and who is supporting (bribing) them.
Applies to all politicians in the US where the supreme court is smoking what? - pot, no cannot be, they would be more sensible.
...from the earth before it's all over, as long as it has the potential of making a profit.
If the Keystone XL pipeline isn't approved by this president, just wait a few years for energy prices to get higher and fossil fuels to be more scarce. It'll eventually happen.
Whales:...what's that sonny?
I SAID I'M SORRY!!!!!!!
Poor bastards can't hear a damn thing ever since we started with our sonic blasters.
want animals to die. No surprise here.
Yes, George W. Bush obviously hated marine animals.
Um, that's a bit of a puzzle, the whale breathes in air at atmospheric pressure, therefore to a first order approximation the air in its body can't be at much more than that after compression and then surfacing.
I'm not saying its impossible, but I can't see what pressure is driving the nitrogen deep into joints etc, it should all be in equilibrium.
the whole point with bends and SCUBA is that you are breathing high pressure air, and so high pressure nitrogen diffuses into the parts of the body with lower partial pressures of nitrogen, then when you surface the high pressure nitrogen wants to diffuse out again, but can't easily. If the whole lot starts in equilibrium then it all compresses together. This loosely is why duck diving into quite significant depths is safe without a decompression stage.
...
8) Coral Relocation Consultants
9) Cochlear Implant Maker for Conchs
10) Ear Surgeons for Sturgeon
11) Disability Lawyers for Sharks
12) Mime School Professor for Deaf and Dumb Clownfish
13) Burst Blowfish Re-Inflation Technician
14) Electric Eel Defibrillation Nurse
I'll be hear all week, folks!
Our food supply is based on oil. We don't rotate crops anymore. We couldn't possibly make enough food if we did. Instead we generate nitrogen as a by-product of oil and pump it back into the soil.
If the oil stops flowing some Americans might have to tighten their belts, but people around the world that depend on our surplus food would just starve...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Scientists don't know what will happen to a dolphin getting in the way?
Well, either they explode, or just get their brain squashed. It could be they just become permanently deaf or just scared shitless and swim to the shore to die there.
Either case: they die, who cares which way?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
When you can kill off the coasts to get a few more scraps to move everyone along until the US finds more oil owning brown people it can 'liberate'.
You can reduce carbon emission a lot without changing lifestyles.
US has carbon intensity of 0.413 (Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide per Thousand Year 2005 U.S. Dollars)
France has 0.167
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdb...
So they make 2.5 times more money for each ton of CO2
i) They aren't fish, they are mammals
ii) They have social grouping activity, the thing that separates the smart animals from the dumb ones, and the thing responsible for the growth of humans into the dominant species
Let me know how you managed to fit the sun or a fusion reactor into your gas tank.
Are we really going to keep pretending that oil and electricity are the same thing?
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
France also has a much milder climate and 3.5 times the population density. They're also heavily dominated by nuclear power, which some people like but others truly hate, and which tends to be one of the more expensive generation sources per kilowatt hour and with a very long turnaround time from conception to commencement of generation.
And once again, we're talking about oil here, oil and electricity are not interchangeable. You need to be comparing oil consumption per capita. France's is a bit over half the US's, but with a population density 3.5 times higher, that's kind of to be expected.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Figure out what level of energy use, as a whole, is acceptable by your calculations. Then figure out how much that means you get to use. Make sure to include all forms of energy usage, such as heating and energy used in building and delivering goods. Adjust your energy use to meet that level, and see how that goes. Then we can talk. Otherwise, kindly STFU.
The reason I say this is not because I'm against trying to reduce energy consumption, I think conservation is always a good idea when practical, but because I'm sick and tired of hypocritical online eco-whiners. They'll bitch about how "people" should do something yet are unwilling to do it themselves. Somehow they see it as ok to bitch that others should be willing to make sacrifices but don't make any themselves.
So put up or shut up. Don't whine that "people" need to change their energy use, but then continue to live an energy intensive first world lifestyle. You are people too. If you cannot or will not adjust your usage, why would you assume anyone else would be willing?
Wanted: Marine Life Impersonators. Must have own costume and be able to thrive in salt water conditions. Overtime available.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
I don't like the "energy" euphemism, they're not searching for some tidy glowing yellow stuff like something from an RTS game. Let's call it what it is. OIL. Wildlife-gooping, coast-ruining, fossil-carbon-filled, toxic oil that needs to have more energy dumped into it to be refined into something we can use.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So long, and thanks for the all fish!
Sig?
except for people were complaining that bush was not a real republican and he was a RINO, so which is it??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Let me know how you managed to fit the sun or a fusion reactor into your gas tank.
Tesla managed it somehow.
WHY don't they know the impact?
When I was in this man's Navy (US) out on the Big Pond, we used practice depth charges all the time, and that was way back when Moby Dick was a minnow.
We killed 30,000 shrimp one time and, I'm sorry ... they deserved it for doing performance art where their echo pattern looked like a submarine. They weren't "a" submarine, but they were submarine.
Anyway, if we can construct punny remarks that amuse the author, I'm certain we could test this idea with small underwater sonic booms and do a surface body count charted against Db to see if we can eliminate, " [Scientists] ...aren't sure how the cannons will affect fish and other sea creatures or how any physiological effects on them may impact the fishing industries of the U.S."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Is this just early viral marketing for a new Aquaman movie?
Now you claim there are 5 Tesla cars per million people. At one point there were 5 cars period per million people. Just as a practical ICE vehicle took time to refine, so will a practical EV, as you recognized. But peak oil, like other peak resources, doesn't mean a resource will just up and disappear suddenly. As easy petroleum is depleted, its price will rise gradually over the decade or two needed to ramp up EV production, giving the market some time to make a transition. And there's always biodiesel to smooth the gap.
brain structure is the entire reason humans grew into dominant species, but whales have a brain mostly dedicated to sensory perception.
Ramp up the explosions, to warn the animals that something BIG is comming. Start with 100 DB and ramp it up over a few days to drive them out of the area. If one starts with the Big Bang it will totally disrupt the ears and phisilogy of the animals.
- that it'll affect the noise-sensitive mammals (and maybe fish). .. because Big Oil wants to find more!
- that these endangered and most interesting creatures are important.
- that they don't care
America! F*ck yeah! I guess this is my chance to go down to the Carolina coast and find me a nice Orca skeleton. There should be lots lying around pretty soon. All encased in tons of rotting flesh and blubber, of course, but no worries: I'll just leave that mess for the edification and amusement of the tourists.
The parts of our brain structure that are most associated with our cognitive abilities evolved from the parts that processed smell. Whales clearly communicate using their song, so what's to say that the parts of their brains that process sound (which would be the bulk of their sensory needs) aren't undergoing the same transition?
Why is Obama approving this, shouldnt this be under the jurisdiction of the EPA or something?
What could possibly go "booonnnggggg"?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
??
By any metric, that is a serious amount of acoustic pressure. It doesn't matter if you rely on sound to find your way around or locate prey, if you encounter that underwater you're getting turned into jelly.
(walk into a pet store and tap on the fish tanks. Go on, I'm giving you permission).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
What the hell are energy deposits? Have we renamed "fossil fuels" like oil and natural gas to simple "energy"? Because PR professionals don't get to do that!
What we really need is a mechanism to churn that frozen carbon dioxide at the bottom of the ocean! We're going to find a way to kill ourselves off yet. The shame of it is, we just cant stop ourselves.
These are the same airguns that have been used for many decades in ocean waters everywhere in the world. I have watched sea lions playing in the towed array of air guns behind a survey ship as they are operating. Sound levels of these guns are comparable to the noise made by a tanker and are actually lower than the low frequency sonar used by Navies all over the world. Whales and other marine mammals are quite capable of avoiding the noise, and normally do just that. The Navies of the world have been making much more noise without any environmental hysteria for decades.
http://sciencenotes.ucsc.edu/9...
Did anybody see this part?
>> These sonic cannons are already in use in the western Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska and other offshore oil operations around the world.
The damage is already being done, we've just decided to expand the scope to include those waters between the East Coast and Europe.