NAMAZU RECOMMENDS:
| Namazu, the Japanese demigod giant catfish known as the "Earth Shaker" is now our official coastal zone management analyst |
If you have been following things since the AAB first founded the "Namazu School" of climate study you know that I went through some very rough times early on when working conditions for giant catfish demigods were really terrible. You've heard how our old supervisor the god Kashima kept me from wiggling ( due to my size my wiggling causes coastal earth quakes and storm events ) by keeping a sword point on my head or holding a stone on my head. (below is an old clipping from the bad old days with Kashima making an example out of me in front of some of my smaller cousins.
Again, if you have been following the story you know that Kashima's god union contract allowed for breaks and early retirement. After some wiggling activity by me during one of his breaks the coastal Japanese people adjusted their building codes and I was at last free to wiggle in a sort of live and let live relationship. Kashima wasn't as needed, and of course with all of the featherbedding provisions in his union contract he was never that productive anyway so he took early retirement and lives in Pebble Beach California. I was really glad to get him off my back. I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to speak directly with all of the two legged intelligent beings on the planet about the kind of coastal zone planning that will allow us to live in peace. We giant catfish demigods don't want Kashima back, and he never was a solution anyway. So its vital we talk. We giant catfish gotta wiggle
and that means the coastal plains and especially the beach communities are going to get some over wash from time to time. Most of my cousins like my Cajun Cousin Jack are still shy of humans and don't communicate. Personally I think we "Forces of Nature" and the two legged coastal communities need to talk. If we could just some how learn to get along and allow each other room to breathe and grow we could eliminate the god/demigod unions all together and enjoy greater freedom.
So in these pages I will be discussing life at the beach, so to speak, in light of climate reality. The Namazu school is always open to comment so I hope you will join into the discussions via the comment box. I will also be linking you to interesting concepts that make individual homes and whole communities on the coastal plains more impervious to the periodic weather and seismic events that currently cause so much destruction. Today I'd like to draw your attention to the realm of urban food security.
One of the constant problems related to disaster survival and recovery is the overly long food logistic chain that feeds most modern cities. If cities were more self sufficient in food production and the lines of food supply shorter the occasional natural disaster would be less expensive to deal with. In the old days cities were often surrounded by "truck farms" which grew and sold produce in the city, and dairy farms producing almost 100% of a city's dairy consumption. Today the "burbs" have eaten most of the close in farm land. However the old system wasn't perfect. Close in truck and dairy farms could be damaged by the same Forces of Nature (like my wiggling in the coastal seafloor mud) as the city suffered. More over as the AAB guys described previously to my being able to directly address you, close in truck gardening doesn't preserve urban food production in the event of sudden dramatic climate change. Here we are not speaking of the kind of insidious on again off again change over years that some believe is happening due to our human activities and their emissions. Here we are talking about the type of sudden almost instant climate change that accounts for why woolly mammoth caucuses have been found in sub arctic regions quick frozen with subtropical vegetation still in their mouths. This is the type of climate change that comes from a big meteor strike, or some combination of orbit drift, orbit wobble, solar flares, or volcanic activity that really changes a climate over night. These forces of nature , like me, are beyond human control. But by acknowledging that they exist and will from time to time manifest themselves they can be rendered much less troublesome. I mean really, can't we all just get along? It would be very helpful if cities produced more of their own food. It would be a great aid to survival in a worse case to have that food produced in weather and seismic resistant indoor spaces. Can it be done? Yes, visit the Kraft hydroponics exhibit at Disney World, read some of the past blogs on the subject and visit the links provided by the AAB previously. Is it being done, yes, but in far too few places.
That brings me to my purpose in writing today. Singapore, literally an urban nation by the sea is raising indoor food in some very confined spaces. I wanted to give you a link to a description of their efforts. http://news.liveandinvestoverseas.com/Investment/singapores-high-rise-farm.html Look, its great that the AAB has given us this opportunity to chat. But it is important that you humans converse with each other on this and share plans that work. We "demigods" or "Forces of Nature" were here before any humans. Indeed some of our occasional more energetic activities caused some of the mass extinction that allowed your species to rise. Really, do you think you would have fully evolved if T-Rex was still stalking the coastal plains? We are going to be here for as long as the planet lasts. I'm not saying just "get used to it"; I'm saying accept it and adapt so we aren't really threatening to you. Look you got off the planet and went to the moon, you are capable of thinking outside the box. Let's begin.
Here are some addition links to descriptions of urban indoor food production.
http://www.thomaswhite.com/explore-the-world/green-report/2011/urban-farming-growing-food-in-skyscrapers-and-giant-barges.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
This next link is to videos on hydroponics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzgDI8Hk0Kg
No comments:
Post a Comment