Letter writer: Seismic testing threatens NC coast

Graphic by Lori Deaton

This time of year, I always begin to feel nostalgic for vacation —particularly trips to the beach with my family. I am grateful for evenings in the surf with my mama looking for sand dollars, my dad’s uncanny ability to spot dolphins in the choppy waves. I fear this is what we stand to lose if we allow offshore oil and gas exploration off the coast.

Seismic testing, a method of offshore oil and gas exploration, is the process of shooting frequent bursts of air into the earth’s crust in order to find reserves of oil and gas beneath the ocean floor. Residual effects from these blasts can last for months at a time. The Department of the Interior estimates that seismic testing affects up to 138,000 marine animals that rely on sound to communicate — like whales and dolphins.

Right now, President Obama is deciding whether to allow seismic testing off our shores. I urge everyone who has a fond memory of the beach, like me, to call on the president to block seismic testing in the Atlantic.

— Caroline Brinegar
Charlotte

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11 thoughts on “Letter writer: Seismic testing threatens NC coast

  1. boatrocker

    While I see the point of the letter in all it’s borderline PETA glory-
    Encourage NC energy companies that be to perfect and implement tidal energy generators- like Hawaii just did.
    You know, Hawaii, part of ‘Murica.
    But oops, free energy supplied by tides (thanks moon)- color me socialist.

  2. Negrodamus

    Here’s a good exercise for your young mind to engage in. Maybe you could even do it with your parents. Look at everything around you and everything you do, and see if oil/gas is somehow involved. Now imagine what your life would be like without oil/gas.

    • boatrocker

      Clean? Sustainable?
      4,000 ish’Muricas not dying for oil in a war started by a president who misled an entire country?

      Count me in, Negrodamus!

      • Lulz

        Yet no moral outrage at the 50 millions plus killed in the name of birth control, feminism, and leftism.

        • boatrocker

          Ummmm, yeah.
          Tell me again how Hillary started the slave trade and put Jews in ovens during the Holocaust.

      • Negrodamus

        With emissions controls, oil is relatively clean, and natural gas is very clean; and if oil is abiotic in origin, then it is sustainable. Question is, if oil is abiotic/sustainable, would progressives still whine about it?

        Of course…

        • boatrocker

          A rather big ‘if’, I think we’re all in agreement on that one.
          If oil were proven to be abiotic, hmmm…. we’d probably keep using it at the current rate we do at present.

          • Negrodamus

            Actually, it’s not a BIG ‘if’. The Russians drill according to this theory, and they are the world’s second largest producers. And like I said before, it makes perfect sense. Hydrocarbons can be, and are, abiotic in origin. Furthermore, from what I’ve read, complex petroleum molecules cannot be produced at the pressures existing in the earth’s crust, which is the only place sedimentary rock is found..

    • Lulz

      They need to live without energy for a while. Just imagine not being able to post on facebook.

      • boatrocker

        Jut imagine having to say such spiteful things to others withing arms’ reach.

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