A THERMAL CAROL

Climate ghosts . . .

Note to readers: I occassionally accept pieces from readers. This is one - it’s a piece written by a reader. His nom de plume is “The Cowboy Professor.” He’s indeed a bit of the former and a lot of the latter. Apologies to Charles Dickens for his use of “A Christmas Carol” for the template. And apologies to everyone else that I couldn’t wait for the Christmas season to publish it.

Mr. Stewart McGorp listened closely. The attractive blonde MSNBC weather reporter animatedly exclaimed the new record high temperature set yesterday. Her brow was appropriately furrowed with well-rehearsed sincerity as she announced it was the warmest temperature on this date since A.D. 1210, which just happened to be the peak of the Medieval Warm Period. Stew freaked out, but only momentarily because he successfully found the remote and turned off the T.V., then deftly got into a lotus position, breathed deeply and uttered “oohm” four times, give or take.

Time passed. Finally, he felt he had become sufficiently centered and got to his feet, emerged from his parents’ basement, opened the automatic garage door with his power remote, and proudly drove his all-electric Prius across town to a protest staged by his organization, Neo-Luddites for Less. The young activists had gathered that morning on the outskirts of Boulder at the office of a Republican U.S. Senator who was on record as having said he didn’t believe in human-caused global warming (Remember, this is a fairy tale, so though still unlikely, stranger things could possibly happen than the election of a conservative in Boulder, Colorado.)

Once the group had assembled in the Senator’s parking lot, Stew got the group amped up with a lengthy diatribe about the world going to hell in a hand basket. Once their emotions reached a fever pitch, they systematically vandalized the outside of the Senator’s office, and then ridiculed and terrorized his small children being shepherded past them by his overly-pregnant wife. For their coup de grace, they splashed coal-colored dye on the Senator’s white labradoodle puppy as it leaped from the family’s gas-burning monstrous 1985 compact two-door Ford Fiesta. The Luddites chanted “Republi-turd climate deniers gotta go, yeah, yeah” set to the tune of a funeral dirge.

Nearly an hour passed before they felt they’d achieved the requisite media coverage for the local evening news, and having reached that subjective plateau, they adjourned to “Che,” their favorite coffee bistro on the Pearl Street Mall. There, proudly displaying red berets on their shaggy domes, they gloated amongst themselves about the successful demonstration while politely sipping $10 lattes generously underwritten by their benefactor, the self-proclaimed American patriot George Soros. The discussion morphed into how great it would have been to have lived during the good old chilly days of the Little Ice Age. They expressed strong support for “carbon credits”, though only to be paid by others as their penance for exhaling that most dastardly of pollutants, CO2.

When Stew’s handwoven hemp underwear began to bind up in his backsides, he bid his cohorts adieu and began to gingerly limp down the mall. He was blissfully headed toward his modest and moral mode of transportation when he was rudely interrupted by a strange apparition that materialized before him. Actually, it was only a reformed hippie who had fallen out of an aspen tree and landed haphazardly in the community goldfish pond with a loud ‘ker-plunk’. Sputtering as he arose from the algal muck, the man opened his arms and shouted to Stew, who had by then quickened his pace in order to vacate the premises.

The call came out of the blue. “Hey, Stew, it’s me, your old friend Gnarly. Don’t you recognize me?”

Stew furrowed his sunburned brow and thought, No, it can’t be Gnarly. Stew knew that old Gnarly had been gone for at least six months. He was certainly as dead as a doornail - although truth be told, Stew had never seen a doornail, deceased or otherwise.

He stopped, turned back and squinted at this strange creature. It was hard for Stew to recognize him. If it actually was Gnarly, his once-matted blonde dreadlocks had been shorn down to a respectable crew cut, and ubiquitous woven chains of aromatic hemp fibers no longer hung around his neck. Ragged jeans and technicolor tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirts had been replaced with a finely-tailored, but now thoroughly-soaked, pin-stripe Brooks Brothers suit. However, the voice did sound familiar to Stew, so he paused, his brain spinning.

“B..bu..but you can’t be Gnarly,” Stew finally managed to choke out. “He died. He fell down the chimney of the Rawhide power plant last Christmas while trying to hang up a banner protesting coal-generated electricity.”

“Precisely, my good friend,” said a smiling Gnarly as he extracted a clump of stringy dark green slime from his cuff and deftly flicked it onto the bricks. “But,” and Gnarly raised a boney index finger and shook it, “I’ve been allowed to return on a personal mission and, like, let you know that you still have time.”

“Time for what?”

“So, uh, well, time to give up your fears, my good man. You need to ditch the ‘sky-is-falling’ hyperbole crap, and, like, rejoin mainstream society again.”

“Bah, humbuggery! You truly are daft, Gnarly. And, by the way, quit saying ‘like’, won’t you? That went out in junior high.” Stew hitched up his jeans and sighed in a fit of disgust before continuing his defense. “Listen, Gnarls, it is the preeminent mission of my life to scream at mainstream citizens in order to shock them into doing something to save the earth and all its living things before our sacred ecological system goes belly up. Failing that, I hope to at least give them a massive guilt trip. It is my duty to lead by example, stressing low-impact living for all to see, including driving clean electric cars, ceasing the oral suckage of inorganic water through evil plastic straws and only using sustainable products like free-range yak’s milk and hyper-organic alfalfa sprouts.”

“Sure has done a lot of good, hasn’t it?” replied Gnarly as he shrugged his damp shoulders. “Speaking of that shocking product offshoot of Ben Franklin’s kite, Stew, tell me, like where does all that alternate current energy come from that powers your mighty little righteous morality chariot?” Gnarly raised his dripping hand. “Wait. Don’t answer. I’ll tell you. The bulk of our electricity comes from places like my old nemesis, the aforementioned Rawhide power plant, the powerful current we have courtesy of, like, our little black fossilized flammable friends, the ferns and trilobites of the Pennsylvanian epoch, duh. Time for you to face the facts about your wonderous electricity, my good Stew.”

Stew stood there, hardly believing the nature of the conversation he was having there on the Pearl Street Mall, and with an apparition saturated with pond water, no less.

“Oh, and that reminds me,” said Gnarly. “Uh, ya know, when I was hanging by my fingertips from that scalding cement lip of the power plant chimney, a ghostly creature who looked a lot like Big Al appeared before me as a hovering blimp. He told me he had finally reformed once he realized the error of his rhetorical ways, and knowing my utmost dedication to halting climate change, he wanted to set me straight. And so, luckily, just before I lost my grip and fell into the gaping maw of the fiery furnace, thanks to the assistance of my hero, large Albert, I had an epiphany.”

Then Gnarly hitched up his sopping drawers and concluded by saying, “You, my friend, still have time. Forthwith, you will be visited by some of my ghostly colleagues. You will experience what I have, and then some. So, like, uh, buckle up, my good man.”

And with that, Gnarly was magically transformed with a puff into a stubby-legged black and white Jack Russell- Shih Tzu cross, one of an itinerant street performer’s many trained Frisbee dogs on the mall. Gnarly’s tailored Brooks Brothers suit now lay sopping and deflated on the herringbone red brick pavement. The puppy looked back over his hindquarters one last time, wagged his docked tail and trotted off to get some doggie bon bons and find a friendly hand willing to scratch behind his furry ears.

Stew was shaken to his core. He brushed the unruly locks from his eyes and looked around frantically, but he was unable to see anywhere he could assume that most comforting lotus position. It was with Herculean effort that he managed to reach his parking spot up on 9th Street and pilot the little electric current-eater back to his parents’ home, where he headed forthwith down to his basement bedroom back behind their washer and dryer. Were it not for the unfortunate meeting with his old friend Gnarly, he would have been exhilarated by the day’s many successes. But not now.

It took a while, but after some deep breathing and a few chants, Stew finally managed to relax and was able to squeeze in a little nap. However, that third latte with the extra dollop of organic, non-GMO, caramel-topped non-dairy whipped cream eventually generated basic urges within him, forcing him to arise and use the toilet. There, while checking out the progress of his latest hair plug transplants, a sallow face appeared over his shoulder in the mirror. Whoa! The figure scared him enough to warrant another visit to the porcelain throne.

“Fear not,” said the gray-bearded apparition. “I’m the Ghost of Climates Past. Come with me,” and the ghostly geezer beckoned with a wrinkled index finger.

Stew gulped. He cringed. He wanted to run away, to refuse. But remembering Gnarly’s message and after considering the meager alternatives, he decided he had to comply. “Gimme a sec, okay?” he asked.

The ghost nodded his assent.

Stew reluctantly changed out of his PJs with the L.L. Bean duck motif and donned some pre-stressed jeans with mechanically-produced holes, a pair of blanched almond-colored Crocs for his feet, and a rainbow t-shirt that proclaimed tolerance of all things liberal. When he emerged from his bedroom, the old ghost took his hand and the unlikely pair began their flight back 5,500 years onto the shortgrass prairie out east of the Rockies. It was the peak of the Altithermal Warm Period. With little vegetative cover, it didn’t take long for them to locate a small band of aboriginal hunter-gatherers huddled in the meager shade of a small cottonwood alongside the long-dry channel of an old river bed. They were desperate and starving in their habitat devoid of animals because of both unheralded heat surpluses and water deficits.

But how could dry, hot land be possible back then?, questioned Stew? There are no Republican-piloted SUVs anywhere to be seen on the landscape!

It turned out that these emaciated hunter-gatherers were delighted for the company and invited Stew and the ghost to join them that evening in their family circle around the campfire, all-the-while smiling and rubbing their eager hands together in anticipation. Having gone without a substantial meal in who knows how long, they began licking their drooling chops at the sight of well-nourished sojourners from the 21st Century. Eventually Stew and his elderly guide figured out they were about to become the main entrée on the evening’s menu. So they deftly dodged dozens of stone-tipped airborne projectiles launched at them as they affected a successful escape, thus avoiding being barbequed. Once in the clouds, they exhaled a deep collective breath of relief and flew off west to the cool elevations of the shining mountains. There they were welcomed by myriad well-fed peaceful hunter-gatherers chilling out along the placid spruce-lined shore of a glacial lake where they roasted a heaping pile of tender elk steaks.

After catching their breaths and experiencing marvelous aboriginal hospitality for a bit, the ghost then transported Stew forward through time to the Yucatan Peninsula at about A.D. 1. There they observed Mayan priests bedecked in the colorful feathers of soon-to-be endangered parrots. The ornately-bedecked priests formed a column that ascended large limestone blocks and began a solemn midnight ceremony on the dark side of a mossy pyramid. With the ghost serving as interpreter, Stew watched as the spiritual authorities demanded tribute paid to them by awe-struck peasants or else the priests would not allow the sun to rise (So as you can see, solar credits were popular long before organic carbon and CO2 were deemed pollutants by eminent scientists of the political persuasion like Ms. Alexandria Occasional Cortex, B.S.). As the ceremony began to reach its climax, the priests drew nearer to them with gleaming eyes. Stew and his ghostly guide were perceptive enough to recognize their imperiled situation and managed to fly away. So Stew had another close call, this time avoiding having his heart ripped out with an obsidian knife by bloodied Mayan priests intent on appeasing the voracious appetites of the solar energy gods.

Once they were safely back in Boulder, and before Stew was turned over to the Ghost of Climates Present, the old ghost spoke one last time.

“Now Stew,” he said, “has it dawned on you yet that climates are not, and have never been static?”

Stew abruptly replied with a harsh accusatory tone, “Now, Mr. Ghost, don’t you go confusing climate with weather like all the other deniers. I’m up on that stuff.”

“Nice try, Stewart. Great talking point you’ve mastered, and a decent attempt at obfuscation. Scale and time don’t let you off the hook despite what the environmentalist priests are trying to peddle to you acolyte sponges. Climates and weather patterns have been changing for as long as the world has been turning. Ever heard of the Pleistocene Ice Age ? Or the elevated temps of the Altithermal?”

Stew chewed on his lip as he sputtered, “Buh..but..but.”

“Keep your butt to yourself, Mister McGorp,” said the ghost sternly before changing the subject.

Standing next to the Ghost of Climates Past was a young woman with rosy cheeks and an enigmatic smile on her lips. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, “And now, Mr. Stew, let me introduce you to my comely niece, Reagan Thatch, a recent graduate of the College of Rational Thought in Berkeley, Montana. She is filling in temporarily, and admirably, I might add, as the Ghost of Climates Present, and she is here to escort you on the next leg of your journey. Be well, my friend.” And with that he flitted away, robes asunder, catching the steep curl of an unseasonably-warm Chinook.

Ms. Reagan gently took Stew’s hand, tossed her comely golden curls back with a well-practiced flick of her head, and said, “Hello, Mr. McDork, er, McGorp. Ready?”

Stew nodded, and before he could catch his breath, he found they had abruptly flitted up and away, across the Pond to the Old World, setting down on the campus of East Anglia University. Once inside the science hall, she showed him people with very proper British accents sporting starched and pressed white lab coats and name tags that confirmed their credentials as “scientists.” Stew and Reagan watched as these scientists consciously adjusted temperature readings on their laptops in order to support their dire predictions of the coming climatic apocalypse to their gullible subjects. They culminated this exercise by attempting to illustrate their numbers with freehand line graphs approximating the silhouettes of NHL hockey sticks, the steep upward curves demonstrating the predicted coming temperatures. Unfortunately, someone neglected to tell them that computer models are only that. They did manage to substantiate one old adage, though, which is ‘garbage in, garbage out.’

“Behold,” Reagan the ghost said, “they know not that they themselves have become the hockey pucks.” She went on to mention that these wanna-be lab-coat mannequins were also on the cutting edge of popularizing the newly-minted concept called “science by consensus” – the notion that when enough of the proper people (e.g., acceptable and pure) agree on something, it must be true (you know, like all the Danish citizens who collectively marveled over their Emperor’s new wardrobe. Well. . . except for that one darn little wardrobe denier).

Having seen quite enough, Stew and Reagan then flew back across the Pond to D.C. and circled overhead while protesters protested on the north side of the White House. There, refugees from the 2000s tried to repeat talking points about sustainability and getting free things from the noted pornographer Bernie Sanders, noted Native American Elizabeth Warren, and noted walking advertisement of equine whitening toothpaste, Ms. Occasional Cortex. Also known as the “free-lunchkins” for their unanimous endorsement of all thing socialist, these protesters also seemed almost orgasmic when they suddenly remembered to exercise their righteous indignation against “climate deniers”.

Then Reagan relinquished her control and turned Stew over to a particularly precocious baby, WaWa, the “Ghost of Climates Future” and WaWa and Stew blasted off in hyper-speed from the apex of the Washington Monument, up, up and away.

“Where are we going?” asked Stew? He feared the worst – perhaps having to sit through an entire reprise of Waterworld. If he had to watch mariner Kevin Costner demonstrate again the utility of webbed digits in a future overly-aqueous world, Stew was afraid his head would explode. Spared that sentence, he might have to observe herds of aromatic hippies trying to learn the backstroke in the flooded canyons of deepest, darkest Manhattan.

WaWa was not old enough to have yet acquired language, but only pointed downward, drooled and grunted.

There below them, through the parted clouds, it appeared to Stew that the high priests and priestesses of the Religion of Radical Environmentalism may actually have succeeded after all. To Stew’s absolute amazement, it appeared the Atlantic coast was not submerged as predicted by computer models. In fact, the sea levels had remained essentially the same, give or take a few inches.

It’s a miracle, Stew thought. We’ve saved the world! The native islanders of the South Pacific won’t have to keep their heads above the waterline by clinging to the rims of volcanoes after all.

But there was a more visible impact. All the evil factories, large corporations and “big box” stores were shuttered and locked up as tight as a pessimistic activist’s distal intestinal sphincter. People were now doing the bulk of their “shopping”, if you want to call it that, in city dumps. Large farms no longer existed. All that remained were small “organic” operations raising non-GMO alfalfa sprouts and gluten-free lima beans. Gas (the non-intestinal kind) was over $100/gallon, and most citizens were pedestrians (except, of course, politicians, Hollywood celebrities and the most affluent, strident Lefties). That was a pretty big shift considering the average world’s temp had only raised half a degree or so in the past 30 years.

Although disappointed with the changes to the economic system, Stew breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that at least he didn’t have to watch Waterworld again. So, after bidding WaWa adieu at the Boulder city limits, and with his new perspective, he sat down at a bus stop and contemplated both his navel and the future of humanity.

In sticking to the Dickensonian script in this Fairy Tale, Stew had his own epiphany following the Ghostly Trinity-guided world tour, but it came at a heavy price. When Stew formally resigned his membership from the Luddites for Less, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists and MoveOn.org, he was continually asked by his former compatriots if he now thought that the earth was flat or that the universe was created in six days. For a time, he attempted to respond to each query, politely pointing out their hypocrisy and naivete, but alas, it was to no avail. Eventually he realized that these were only rhetorical questions being thrown at him by former friends and associates, and so he learned to just smile back (although then the former friends called his non-verbal response a ‘smirk’). They considered him apostate, and more importantly, “just no fun.” His tires were slashed, his parents changed the locks on his bedroom door in their basement and dear Mom refused to do his laundry anymore.

The new Stew tried to gather himself and go on, hoping maybe to hang out on Pearl Street and distribute free glossy photos of William F. Buckley, Jr., or failing that, maybe get an internship with that conservative Boulder senator, but alas, neither were to be. Sadly, the senator had joined the ranks of the impeached for his non-belief, and was last seen begging for spare change outside a pot dispensary on the corner of 8th and Pearl. And about Stew’s notion to distribute Buckley, Jr. photos, Boulder had by then begun strictly enforcing its non-littering laws to include photographic hand-outs. The only exceptions were tastefully-tinted images of either Alan Ginsberg, Justice Ruth Ginsburg, or Che Guevara.

As a result, Stew moved into an old Airstream trailer out in the middle of Wyoming’s Red Desert, a blank spot on the map devoid of television, internet or mail delivery. So now, while the world continues turning, the climate keeps changing, and politicians and environmentalists argue over climate data, both real and imagined, the reclusive Mr. McGorp now quietly devotes his remaining days to designing snow globes and efficient space heaters for South Pacific islanders in advance of the Neo-Pleistocene.

The end.