Un-Cat — Episode 30. Year of the Fish

 

USGS Geologic History Map, more info here.

Anytime U.G. the Cat-person traveled anywhere near a beach the smell of the salt air of the ocean brought good memories of her best friend Lee the Dog. He would run on two feet, but he could gallop on all fours. Just like any water loving dog, he would run into the waves every time they found any beach and then run right back up to her and shake out his long blue-grey fur.

Just like any cat, U.G. didn’t like this salt spray and sand mess. She could swim. She liked to fish. But, she would wear fishing waders, and a wind-breaker, especially on a cool day on the beach on the Oregon Coast.

It wasn’t until after U.G.’s telepathic AI-Critter was tamed, their first trip to the beach in 1979, that she understood why the Dog-person from a planet far, far away loved Earth’s oceans so much, — they had nothing like them on the Dog-planet.

The Dog-planet didn’t even have any lakes the size of the Great Lakes of North America, over 80% of the water on the Dog-planet was underground.

Here on Earth, Lee’s mission was to find good food for the Dog-people and if there were sentient inhabitants on the deliciously smelly little blue planet, to make friends and share recipes.

On the planet of the Dog’s, the culinary arts is the highest form of art, and food is the basis for their entire economy. The Dog-people never even imagined pollution and ecosystem destructive industries like human people commit. Much less an entire planet full of people more related to waring primates, than canines.

It was this Dog-logic always searching for food that was running through Lee’s mind as he joyfully leapt in the waves, smelling therefore imagining all the tasty creatures in the sea.

From space in 1977, as his tiny egg shaped craft approached Earth, on the day side of the planet there were a few pale scars of cities, a couple pit mines, and scattered “bumps” on the surface as evidence of humans. On the dark side on a clear night, cities with millions of people glow like thin spider threads of light.

BUT, what caught the Dog people’s attention with their smell’O’scope technology was the surface 70% covered by salt water the same PH as a healthy womb. From the Dog people’s point of view, humans were barely visible from space, but phytoplankton blooms are massive.

Those tiny silicon diatoms a bright rank wave of photosynthesis; micro-algae teeming with plankton. There are so many of these microscopic glowing living-gem like creatures in the world’s seas, by mass tiny diatoms’ unicellular shells make up half of the organic material in the oceans and are the basis of the food chain feeding everything else alive on the planet. — THAT fact is what got their attention from billions of light years away.

In the 80s and 90s, Lee told her several times, “The key to shifting the global warming trend on Earth is this small smelly blue planet’s oceans. The people of Earth need to restore and expand salt water tidal marshes with seagrass, kelp forests, and mandrake forests.”

Since the industrial revolution in the 1800s salt marshes have been devastated because people didn’t understand their importance to the global ecosystem. The 1900s saw further abuse and filling in and paving over of both waterfront-property and the fertile mud of inland tidal marshes turned into farmland.

When Utah Robin Green became President of the United States in 2021. One of the first things she did was restore a small marsh, a pond for ducks in the White House lawn, but it was symbolic in contrast to what she asked all the governors of states with ocean shorelines or great lakes to do.

The United States needs to become a power player in the global Blue Carbon Initiative. Expect increasingly volatile weather. Prepare for storms, don’t be caught “surprised” by climate change. We are moving people to higher ground and building new environmentally sound structures. Not just plopping solar panels on roofs and caulking windows. After storms destroy a waterfront neighborhood we need to repair the wetlands and tidal marshes that buildings should never have been constructed on in the first place and build our homes on the rock of common sense.

Trade-in discouraged for angry and do something

#drawfool doodle for Feb. 21, 2018.

I had just finished this cartoon about how I imagine these scary liberal trolls, um... sort of like young fat Yoda with more eyebrows... When this really scary liberal troll started "yelling" at me and this other lady, apparently it was about his own traumatic childhood? But, to sum up the last line of his rant --- "that we could take our empathy and shove it up our asses,... along with 'hopes and prayers'". .... So? I think the word that set him off was empathy and the line that I feel stupid for adding was 'How do we care?' It was part of a pun about healthcare. As a cancer survivor since my 20s, Obama-care is a big deal at our house... anyhooo.

I was going to write something about how I am sometimes afraid that I behave like a 'liberal troll' and then this guy made me realize I'm not one. Once again, I'm a moderate. So the cartoon above, of the smiling troll who sincerely wants people to read more? Peace, love, justice and the pen is mightier than the sword. Facts, truth and 'The Golden Rule'. Well, these are also tools of the moderate, along with laws, amendments, and constitutions. All created for moderating and upheld via moderation. I'm a moderate troll! ... (that made me chuckle to myself) with a bit of a relief. That liberal troll couldn't have picked a better moment in time to go-off, and wake me up. "Thanks, troll," I say feeling empathy for him.

P.s. To the troll's point, about doing something. Yes. I agree -- The point is to do something and there are a lot of people just sitting on a cushion of empathy, if we don't move our lazy asses, it is inevitable that some of it will get shoved up there.

#drawfool doodle for Feb. 20, 2018.

House plants = carbon sequestration... even spider plants.

Pep talks and pleas for donations abound, I'm not very interested in either of those. Positive energy as ignorance for bliss, and throwing money as a solution for guilt absolution. Not too keen on those lies either. Recognising people all around me are taking action and figuring out how I can join in, even in little ways, day to day, is the best placement of my anger I've found so far.

In case you wondered, I don't have a spider plant. I have a few pots of aloe, and a tropical pine tree in a bucket as a year-round houseplant and stand-in for a cut Christmas tree. I also have some test patches of miniature clover. It turns out this far North in Washington state our climate is too harsh for mini-clover. Regular clover is dwarfed by the weather around my house. Interestingly my test patch of chamomile did better than the clover. So, I traded my bag of clover with someone further South, for a bigger hardier seed and plan to plant that as soon as the ground stops being crunchy. It's below freezing in February today. I also have collected quite a few wildflower seeds, they also get dwarfed around my house, but the plants are beautiful even when less than 1/4 of the size of the same plants in the garden the seeds came from. I write this not to brag, but to cheer myself up. Feb. cold is getting to me. The increased sunshine on clear sunny days is very helpful, but not a single flower sprout tells me it's not spring yet. I'll go take a walk, get some fresh air and look again. More than gardening, I am looking forward to my art studio thawing out.

Profound conclusions? Nope. ... well okay if you read this far I should give up something. I woke up and searched for evidence to indicate if people are interested in climate change. I didn't look at surveys. Only 12 to 13% of people feel compelled to fill out surveys. I didn't look at polls or worse, data collected by the lamestream news media. The statistics on polls are in, and scientists calculated that big money has tainted public opinion on the topic of climate change by 21 to 37% percent against believing humans and the GHG (greenhouse gases) we generate are contributing to global warming. Yes, dear brainwashed masses, on average it's a fact, world temperatures measured all year, all and around the world and then totaled together into an average, it is global warming, not climate change. Even in the lower 48, USA.

Thanks, Obama era EPA to 2016, for the data.

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah. Don't get discouraged, get angry and do something. We all did this together, and it's gonna take all of us, in every wedge of possibility. Each person, doing little things, here and there, every day to keep the planet survivable for all living things, including humans of course. ...yep. I said, yep because I bore myself. Don't even know how many times I've had this cycle of recursive thought. Okay, enough expulsion for today, back to doing stuff I go.