Thar She Craps

Hooray! The earth is saved. Global warming, assuming it ever existed, is fated to enter the dustbin of history along with Trotsky. The reason: Whale shit! Apparently sperm whales are a blubber laden carbon sink. For years it was assumed that because they exhaled they were contributing to increased carbon dioxide emissions but no, sperm whales have learnt to crap in an environmentally responsible way.

Sperm whales find their food in the dark, icy depths of the ocean but, sensibly not wishing to foul their own kitchen, they tend to excrete very close to the surface. This is great news (unless you happen to be swimming nearby) because sperm whale shit is incredibly high in iron and is a natural breeding ground for phytoplankton (whatever that is) which just yums up the CO2. Sperm whales are helping to fight global warming. Its a pity we killed most of them really. Oh well, live and learn.

The thing to do now, of course, is to embark on a crash sperm whale breeding programme until we get their numbers back up to pre "Call me Ishmael" levels. Admittedly I'm not quite sure how to do this but porn seems to work for pandas so I suggest we start there. We'll need some hot fluke on fluke action and a flat screen and dvd player that work under water. Surely this is not beyond our capabilities.

Once the oceans are swarming with sperm whales we can adjust our emissions to coincide with whale levels. Forget carbon trading, we're going to have a Blubber Index. Polluting industries will have their yearly emissions measured and they will be informed of the number of sperm whales they will need to provide to cover the increase. I envision that makers of whale porn are going to be very busy indeed, although probably not as busy as the whales. I estimate that by the year 2045 the oceans will be so full of sperm whales that we'll be able to walk from Canada to South Africa without getting our feet wet. Always assuming we were unfortunate enough to be in Canada or South Africa to begin with of course.

I have stated before that the greatest survival technique an animal can learn is to be useful to humans. Since climate change is the "terror de jour" I think the sperm whales are on to a winner. According to my research (by which I mean according to the research done by the writer of the article I read) it was a team led by Trish Lavery at the School of Biological Sciences at Flinders University who made the discovery. Personally I suspect the whales have simply hired a good PR team. One can almost imagine the strategy session.
"Come on, we've got find a reason for humans not to kill you".
"Well, you know how our shit smells like rust? Maybe we can do something with that".
I understand there was intense lobbying from People for the Ethical Treatment of Phytoplankton as well (don't laugh if there isn't such a group, there will be). Well, its all come good now, the sperm whale is saved. For a while anyway.

Naturally there will be risks attached to a cetacean governed climate policy. At some point as technology marches on we will no doubt actually start to decrease our own carbon emissions. With all the whales flopping about this could lead to the risk that too much carbon dioxide is sucked from the atmosphere leading to a global freeze and a new ice age. Gosh the climate is a fickle little minx isn't she? There will need to be careful monitoring to determine when the whales start soaking up more than we're putting in. At this point the solution is simple; we start killing them again. Call me Ishmael, in about thirty years time.