The Cost of Climate Change     

     Is climate change real?

     If so, are human activities contributing?

     Well, we know this much is true:

     A hundred thousand daily global flights stitch contrails across our fragile atmosphere now, burning so much jet fuel it runs through pipelines to major airports. A million flights every ten days. 

     Two million plus coal-fired power plants belch their waste gasses, double the number that existed in 2000.

     One point two billion gasoline and diesel vehicles add their exhausts to the noxious mix. Electric vehicles are only making an insignificant dent, and even they depend on coal-fired plants for recharging.

     Fifty thousand huge ships ply the global seas daily with their copious diesel exhausts.

     There are thirty-five hundred oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone, each constantly flaring off unrefined natural gas. Thousands of other wells and refineries worldwide add their pollutants.

     Seven point eight billion people inhale oxygen and exhale CO2 constantly while ongoing slash-and-burn agriculture eats deeply into our planet’s lungs.

     This is not conjecture. These are not conspiracy theories. Not political rhetoric. They are unarguable facts, unprecedented to such an extent in all human history.

     More and more scientists agree that it’s madness to pretend all this is not affecting our climate, not inexorably warming it. And there are blatant evidences of creeping overall climate change for all of us to see. Cities like Beijing and New Delhi and Los Angeles are choking on their own smog, creating a litany of sad and expensive health problems. Seas are choking on plastics, polluting as they slowly degrade. Summers everywhere are scorching. There are more frequent and more severe storms. Raging wildfires proliferate. Areas of severe drought are spreading. Crops are failing. Glaciers and icecaps are melting. Sea levels are slowly rising.

     Look at any recent year. The thousands who’ve lost their homes and businesses to vast wildfires in California and Australia and elsewhere, or whose homes and businesses recent severe hurricanes and typhoons have stripped away, as in ravaged Florida, will not be paying taxes anytime soon, while governmental relief and mitigation of these events has been costing the diminishing tax base ever more billions of dollars.

     Logically, obviously, we have only two choices:

     We can bear the cost of adequate climate action now, up front and very soon, creating environmental jobs in the process and improving overall human health and safety worldwide.

     Or we can pay heavily for our inaction later.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

Balloon Wars

     The UFOs that have lately appeared over Alaska and Canada and been shot down by American fighters have revived those tired old fringe speculations about possible visitation by alien creatures—that whole Area 51-with-its-persistent-aura-of-nefarious-secrecy nonsense.

     Let’s think for a minute about the likelihood of such stuff happening.

     From even a relatively short distance away from our planet, let’s say another one of our solar system’s inner group of planets, Mars, we appear as no more than an insignificant faintly bluish speck, just as Mars is no more than a faintly reddish speck from our point of view. From any cosmic perspective farther away, let’s say from the nearest star outside our system, Proxima Centauri, which is 4.3 light years distant (24 thousand billion miles). From there, our entire solar system is but a tiny white spec among trillions of other specs strewn across the Universe in every direction. This means that any alien species would first have to single out our system from that almost unimaginable multitude of specs as somehow extra special, then would have to travel for 4.3 years at the speed of light, which moves at 186,000 miles per second, to get here. But achieving lightspeed is virtually impossible. At some much more likely fraction of lightspeed, the journey would take at least hundreds of our years. This would constitute a stupendous technical achievement, making such a journey intuitively unlikely. It would be further unlikely to think that such a species would accomplish that journey only to then keep it a tantalizing semi-secret from us. Why?

     It is intuitively likely that there is other life in the Universe in other systems, simply because we see the exact same electromagnetic spectrum and the exact same list of chemical elements everywhere we look, and we see a proliferation of other solar systems and their attendant planets everywhere, as well, many in that zone from their suns that allows liquid water.

     Only our arrogance would make us think there is no other sentient life out there. Such life is even logically prolific, given the possibility statistics.

     But would aliens, who would be clearly vastly superior to us in technology, travel some vast distance here, then hang back, perhaps lurking behind Jupiter, and start floating observation balloons in our skies?

     You think what you want.

     I think not.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

 

Remembering my first car

     I bought my first car used for $100 in 1955. It was a 1948 two-tone (black on the bottom, white on the top) Chevy Business Coup with no back seat, intended for use by traveling salespersons, for example. It had a bench seat, a starter button on the floor, and a three-speed manual stick shift. Power was an inline 83-hp six-cylinder engine. It could do 85 or 90 downhill if you had the temerity to push it that hard; I usually did not. Poor-man’s AC consisted of simple swiveling triangular windows just ahead of the side windows; they scooped in enough air to keep the interior quite comfortable. It had roll-up windows and a staticky AM radio. No seat belts or other safety features. No turn signals; we used hand signals back then, which worked fine except in the rain. Braking was four-wheel drums and sometimes iffy if they got hot in the hilly country of the western Massachusetts Berkshires. I did all the maintenance on it myself. I loved it and wish I still had it.

     I worked part-time then by myself manning a two-pump gas station in my home village of Williamsburg doing tune-ups, tire repairs, oil changes, and grease jobs (most cars had many under body grease fittings). I pumped the gas, checked the oil, and cleaned the windshield of every customer’s vehicle. With a car parked over the grease pit for an oil change, two or three tire repairs stacked up, and several vehicles awaiting fuel, it could get busy, but I liked that job as much as any I’ve ever had since.

     Chevy vehicles, of course, have endured over the decades. Other makes of American vehicles that were available then but did not endure and have faded into history included:

Chrysler

Plymouth

Hudson

Pontiac

Kaiser

Fraser

Studebaker

Packard

Tucker

DeSoto

Willis

LaSalle

Mercury

Crossley

Nash

Oldsmobile

Checkers (mostly taxicabs)

     Cars of that era often had manual transmissions, whitewall tires that gave an extra touch of class but were hard to keep clean, exterior visors over simple flat two-piece windshields, rear fender skirts that were a pain to remove for checking pressure or tire changing (especially in the winter), liberal use of chrome, and tough steel bodies you could sit or stand on, but which nevertheless sadly turned to lace along the fender bottoms and rocker panels after a few years of exposure to the heavily salted winter roads of the northlands.

     Our rides have certainly improved over the decades in both comfort and safety. Buyers often do not even bother to look beneath the hoods before purchasing at prices that to me seem astronomical; that was the first thing we did in days of yore, and most of us well knew every facet of how cars worked.

     I remember those simpler times fondly, but not without regrets. If two of the kids in my small-town high school, Linda Sanderson and Mack Heath, had had a padded dash, seat belts, and air bags in their car while traveling a country road in the darkness, they would likely have survived hitting a bridge abutment. Their memorial photos are in my 1956 graduation book.

     I think of them often.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

 

Some Thoughts on Mandates

   A significant segment of American citizenry has gone ballistic against state mask mandates and President Biden’s recent federal vaccination mandate. Protesters say these measures compromise personal freedom.

   If that’s true, there are many rules that could also be said to compromise freedom. Consider our highway laws alone, for example. We’re not allowed to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We can’t cruise the Interstates at 100 mph. We must comply with stop signs and stop lights and lane markings. We must stop for school buses. Cars must have air bags and seat belts, which we must wear.

   But it’s not the duly legislated laws that are the problem, the protesters cry. It’s these cursed mandates.

   Mandates have long been a routine and accepted part of our legal structure. A cursory search of the Congressional Budget Office site reveals at least 75 intergovernmental laws and 135 private sector laws that include various mandates we’ve been living under right along, affecting everything from preserving veterans’ rights, to protecting children from abuse, to the required reporting of environmental hazards by companies.

   All 50 states have had school entry vaccine mandates in place over the past five decades against once-vicious contagious diseases like diphtheria, measles, mumps, hepatitis, whooping cough, and polio. It’s a sure bet that nearly all the current protesters who are so vehemently opposed to the rigorously tested and approved Covid vaccines and the current mandates have themselves been vaccinated as children, which is one good reason they’ve survived disease-free into adulthood to be able to protest.

   As for mask mandates, a study by the Goldenson Center for Actuarial Research (among others) found mask wearing and social distancing can cut virus deaths by two thirds.

   The current mandates, like many others over the decades, have been imposed not to crush freedom, but simply to save American lives, yours and mine and the lives of those we love.

   Three quarters of a million Americans have died and millions more have become seriously ill, many needlessly because they refused masking and vaccination.

   Our current enemy is not to be found among the many different segments of our society. It cares nothing for politics or gender or age or philosophical convictions.

   It is a deadly virus that came out of the shadows to sicken and kill as many of us as it can.

   If we pull together instead of letting it fracture us, we can beat it. And if it takes mandates to help us achieve that goal, then so be it.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

Fighting the Common Enemy

     Our planet Earth is under relentless attack from an alien presence. It cares nothing for national borders, or gender, or race, or ethnicity, or station in life, or politics. It only wants to sicken and kill every human it can invade. So far across the globe it has killed 5.6 million and severely sickened 200 million more. It is a horrific way to die. Straining for every breath for long hours and days. Finally choking to death with a respirator tube inserted down your throat. Isolated behind plastic curtaining. Alone to face the abyss.

     It has singled out our country with a special viciousness, so far killing 673,000 of our relatives and friends and neighbors. In recent months it has even begun attacking and killing our children. Two thousand more Americans are dying every day.

     Our record of fighting this enemy has been one of the worst in the world, with seven times more Americans killed per capita than in the UK, for example, and ten times more per capita killed than in Germany.

     We have the weapons to fight this monster and eventually kill it. We know these weapons are effective. Wearing a mask in public, distancing, using sanitation. And above all, accepting the free and widely available miracle vaccines that can quickly build up tough antibodies within us.

     We’re being asked to mask up in public. We’re not being asked to wear handcuffs or straight jackets or gas masks. Only simple paper masks that allow easy breathing but prevent us and others from being invaded by the enemy. (At times I’ve forgotten I have mine on. To me, it's no hardship at all, especially considering the horrific alternative.)

     We’re being asked to accept one of the free widely available vaccines developed and tested by some of the brightest health soldiers among us. State-mandated vaccinations for children against killer diseases are nothing new, and for decades they have been highly effective in battling once-ruthless enemies like polio, flu, measles, chickenpox, hepatitis, smallpox, mumps, and pneumonia. Fortunately, we now have vaccines that can fight the current enemy just as all the other vaccines over the years have fought similar enemies and won.

     Over 181 million of us have gratefully accepted vaccinations. And as an obvious result, they are not the people being stricken by the enemy. Almost exclusively, the remaining Americans who are getting sick and dying every day are the unvaccinated.

     Please, for your sake and for the sake of family, friends, and neighbors, will you accept one of the proven and approved vaccines?

     Let’s fight and ultimately kill this new vicious enemy of America together. 

Phil

(Please pass this message on.)

The Anti-vaxxers

     My mother shared a hospital room with a woman named Dot when they both gave birth, Dot to a daughter named Cynthia. They vowed their kids would share birthdays together, alternating between our home and theirs in our nearby Berkshire villages. Dot and her husband Howard, who had a woodworking business as did my Dad, became close friends over the years. Cynthia and I did, too.

    Dot and Howard had been childhood polio victims, and the disease had left them severely disfigured and impaired. One side of Dot’s face was paralyzed, though it never dimmed her crooked but genuine smile. Howard was hunchbacked with a twisted torso and one leg shorter than the other, though he never let his condition interfere with business or family life. He walked with an awkward lurching motion, often with the help of a forearm crutch (a walking cane with a forearm brace added).

     Widespread fear of polio was quite real throughout my early childhood. It was a terrible virus, paralyzing and killing seemingly at random, and like the current virus there was no immediate effective defense against it.

     Until Jonas Salk came up with a vaccine that could defeat it. There were no protests against using his vaccine. No reluctance. On the contrary, people were deeply grateful for it. They welcomed it and lionized Salk.

     In recent years, routine mandated polio vaccination of children had eradicated it from America and had reduced the disease worldwide to relatively few cases. If the polio virus could be deprived of all hosts for a period of time, it would at last go extinct planet-wide, so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with other charities and agencies set out to achieve just that, spending millions in a comprehensive effort. But anti-vaxxers and religious objectors and African terrorist groups interfered, intimidating and even killing vaccinators, so the valiant effort eventually sputtered and failed.

     Leaving the polio monster alive and still lurking in the shadows. It’s on the prowl in several countries including Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. In some areas, cases are stealthily on the rise.

     One faction of the recent widespread lockdown protest movement, vehemently objecting to the very measures meant to save them from sickness and death, has been the anti-vaxxers, those who have chosen to deprive themselves—and worse, their children—of vaccinations in general. They are apparently willing to sacrifice hundreds or thousands of others to scourging diseases like the current deadly virus.

     I wish they could have met Dot and Howard, who would have given anything to have had access to the vaccine with the power to spare them from the horrors of polio, but which came too late for them.

     The world is facing a resurgence of killer Covid. Cases of the Delta variant are rising in every one of our 50 states, almost 100 percent among those who have chosen not to be vaccinated. President Biden said, “The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.” Yet anybody in America can get a vaccine free any time they want, unlike in so many other, poorer countries on the planet where people would gladly accept the vaccines to stop the severe sickening and the dying.

     If we do not want to go back into lockdowns and mandated masking, we must get vaccinated. If we want to eat out freely and take a cruise and travel and shop, we must get vaccinated. It’s as simple as that.

     I have a friend in management at Pfizer and he is deeply dismayed that after all the research and work and rigorous testing that produced one of the safest and most effective vaccines ever developed, people by the millions are refusing it. They’ve seen hundreds of their friends and family members and neighbors take the vaccines months ago with no ill effects, yet still they refuse.

     Please. Please help spread the word to get vaccinated. It can save so many lives and keep our economy healthy, too.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

Six-word short stories

     Ernest Hemingway, famous for his Spartan style, is credited with this semi-famous six-word story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

     It’s a strong example of creative compression, inviting reader participation to flesh out the story, which all good fiction does.

     Here are a few six-word shorts I came up with:

Life                                                                  

Too young. Too busy. Too old.

Tragedy

Bought a gun. Sonny found it. 

DMV Statistics

One more drink. Four more dead.

Cell Addiction

Drove and texted. Carved in stone.

Parting

Married happily.  Money woes.  Lawyers richer.

Golden years

Growing old.  Looking back.  Shoulda dids.

Panic

:-))    :-)    :-o     :-/     :-<     !!!

Posture

Sat up straight.  On a thumbtack.

Native America

Chargoggagoogmanchoggaggoggchaubunagungamaugg. White people came. Webster Lake.

(The original Indian name for the lake, which is in Massachusetts near the Connecticut border is the longest place name in the United States.)

See if you can come up with a few shorts. It’s great practice for condensing. Most first drafts of any writing, fiction or non, can be cut down considerably, and always with beneficial effect.

Phil

www.philbowie.com

Check out my North Carolina series suspense novels on Amazon. Also see the latest stand-alone novel of Africa, Killing Ground. Easy buy links in print or Kindle through my website.