Congressman blasts airhorn at offical who said air gun tests don't hurt whales - Polidicks

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/03/08/trump-official-said-seismic-air-gun-tests-dont-hurt-whales-so-congressman-blasted-him-with-an-air-horn/?fbclid=IwAR1GcpcGm7slJ0vB4UCVhDUozTs7z-i85pQ-ftojUNwojFWmSCKKRC-i_fY&noredirect=on&utm_term=.73a26faabbea A hearing on the threat seismic testing poses to North Atlantic right whales was plodding along Thursday when, seemingly out of nowhere, Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) pulled out an air horn and politely asked if he could blast it. Before that moment at a Natural Resources subcommittee hearing, Cunningham had listened to a Trump administration official testify, over and over, that firing commercial air guns under water every 10 seconds in search of oil and gas deposits over a period of months would have next to no effect on the endangered animals, which use echolocation to communicate, feed, mate and keep track of their babies. “It’s fair to say seismic air gun blasting is extremely loud and disruptive ... is that correct?” the congressman asked. “I don’t know exactly how loud it is. I actually never experienced it myself,” Oliver replied. So Cunningham gave Oliver a taste of the 120-decibel horn. An earsplitting sound filled the small committee room. An audience of about 50 gasped and murmured. Cunningham, who represents Charleston and other coastal cities, pressed on. What if it happened every 10 seconds for days, weeks and months, he said. He asked Oliver to guess how much louder commercial air guns are than his store-bought air horn. When Oliver didn’t bite, he told him the sound from air guns is 16,000 times that of his air horn.

Now that's one way to get your point across.

I approve of this. Make them squirm.

I see someone can't get those fucking repeat Truth commercials out of their head too.

another example of the antintellectuals in our government, he has no appreciation for what a very loud blast is for human hearing let alone creatures that have natural hydrophones

Watching the video of this, Oliver dances around so much to feign his ignorance that it's infuriating. He barely even acknowledges that the airhorn is loud, acting like it would be totally manageable if he had someone blasting it in his face every few seconds for months. What a joke.

he probably doesn't realize the dB scale is logarithmic and the difference between 120 and 130 is actually fucking huge.

The guy should've blasted it every few seconds while the guy was talking.

To be more precise, 120 DB to 130 DB is 10 times as loud.

http://puu.sh/CXIfH.jpg In other news, you can buy WMD's on eBay for cheap!

That's around the level of (possibly louder than) the Krakatoa explosion, when a volcano eruption tore an island in half, which was heard literally all over the world and ruptured eardrums of people 40 miles away. I'm going to call bullshit on that advertisement.

not sure about that but you can buy like stupidly bright lamps on amazon that probably can damage your eyes

Made me think of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcEZnEqzCYU

One point Oliver keeps mentioning is distance, and he mentions at 1:38 "they get 10 second intervals between every blast, I think that'd be plenty of time to get to the next section of the ocean". Water is an incompressible fluid, and as a result sound travels much further than in air. The physics is complicated, but from rough estimates, this NPL calculator states each kilometre absorbs less than 1dB of sound. Unless I really can't read logarithms properly, those underwater blasts can probably be heard clear across the Atlantic. http://resource.npl.co.uk/acoustics/techguides/seaabsorption/ Calculation of absorption of sound in seawater

300 dB would be enough pressure for that flimsy plastic enclosure to fly apart.

Pretty much, if you're in the ocean, if you dive down under water you will hear the noise of engines and propellers of cargo ships throughout the ocean, and it's getting LOUDER Things like airguns are obscenely loud, if this was a few kilometers away from a beach or people diving, they'd get massive complaints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrpkZkwTvu0

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/14/offshore-drilling-trump-official-reveals-plan-and-distractions-delight “One of the things that I have found absolutely thrilling in working for this administration,” said Balash, “is the president has a knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else while we do all the work that needs to be done on behalf of the American people.” This is the plan that would have the air gun tests, and he's actually acknowledging Trump's buffonery lets them commit their skullduggery in the shadows.