Honestly, why are we arguing over climate change, climate disruption or global warming - whatever the heck you want to call it?

The simple fact is, when a bunch of us get together on a cruise ship, or in a hotel or on a planet there’s going to be vomiting and stomach distress. You can count on it; in numbers the human race pretty much makes everything sick, so why not the planet? Heck, history is nothing more than the record of mankind’s gastrointestinal tract when we get too close to each other.

It’s like a cruise ship can’t sail anymore without the norovirus hitching a ride. Mr. Noro V. likes it when we’re all squeezed together. And not just on cruise ships. I see where a landmark hotel in the Catskills is closing for a week because everybody - staff and guests alike - are sick with some kind of stomach distress. Like terrorists, the flu and the norovirus love crowds of people.

As I write this, a quick check of the news says pigs, berries, birds and dogs — yes, dogs! — can make us sick with flu and other stomach-rumbling illnesses. And, of course, there was the guy shot to death in DeLand, Fla., recently who was allegedly in a zombie-like trance and who bit somebody in the face. Yet another “zombie” sighting.

Pigs, zombies, berries and Fido: Really, now, isn’t that a clue that things aren’t exactly right on Planet Earth? Isn’t that reason enough to practice safe “distance” and, like, stay out of crowds? Only, that’s going to get more difficult to do since, in about 35 years, the projections are that there will be more than 9 billion of us cruising along on this little planet.

I know that this climate business has gotten politicized and a lot of folk in the Deep South scoff at the idea of “global warming.”

A lot of these people still put the date for the creation of the world at 4004 B.C. based on Bishop Ussher’s 17th century calculations. The only thing about that is, if it only took 6,000 years to give Earth and everything on it a bellyache, I calculate the end of the world ought to occur about noon next Friday. Until then, I’m staying home.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.