Hello steverino,

also agree with pauls and expat. HO was only presenting a differing view. are we all so tied into the TOD meme that we can't even deal with another approach?

What is the TOD meme?

If TOD really does have a meme, I am naturally inclined to reject it because (as far as I can tell) that meme appears to represent the interests of the oil industry and other related industries. Heading Out seems to speak on behalf of the oil industry as he skeptically evaluates the Global Warming idea.

I have more faith in Al Gore than I have in Heading Out. At least I know Al Gore's name. Anonymous people are often anonymous for a reason. I cannot trust Heading Out until he discloses whether or not there are conflicts of interest.

The article that Heading Out wrote wasn't so very impressive, either. The conservative editorialists are more eloquent in their skepticism, but equally wrong. Heading Out used too many words to say too little.

Heading Out should at least explicitly state his opinions regarding Global Warming. I'd prefer to know what he really thinks. Not that it would change my mind. Not at all. I have read plenty of views regarding Global Warming from numerous sources all across the full range of the political spectrum.

I don't imagine that there is anything that Heading Out could say which would change my mind. I am naturally inclined to oppose the world-polluting, world-destroying, impoverished-persons-oppressing industries. The oil industry has committed enough crimes throughout the world.

I'd much prefer that the oil, coal & mining industries not exist. If that means the end of technological civilization, so much the better.

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1

Hello Everyone,

Jay Hanson has written an excellent -- and terrible -- paper. I am certain that he is speaking the truth. I'd prefer a much better outcome to the human experiment, but the last ten thousand years has removed any doubts from my mind regarding the future apocalypse which will overwhelm humankind and send our species to extinction.

Homo sapiens had to make a choice between Heaven and Hell a long time ago. Humankind has chosen Hell. Mourn, mourn for humankind.

The end is approaching and we won't escape from its clutches. I suspect that everyone intuitively senses that the end is fast approaching -- how else to explain this ADHD culture and its emphasis upon doing everything now? -- but the conscious mind rebels from that conclusion just as surely as it reject the notion of personal death.

I will point out one extremely important statement in Jay Hanson's paper:

We include others in our society when it increases our fitness to do so, but we invent excuses to kick minorities out of our society when resources are insufficient. Allies can become enemies almost overnight. The collapse of Yugoslavia is an example of neighbor
slaughtering neighbor.
http://www.warsocialism.com/thermogenecollision.pdf

The process described above is already occurring in American society in two forms:

1. Increasing stress against the Mexican immigrants (both legal and illegal).

2. The Long War against Terror, which is taking the form of a war against the Muslim resource-owners in order to seize their natural resources.

The worst case scenario is already activity occurring on the Earth right now. There is no need to talk any longer about an apocalypse which is coming in the future. The apocalypse is occurring right now. We're living in the apocalypse and fail to notice it because it is occurring at such a large scale that it escapes our attention (which is attuned to noticing only those things which are immediately in front of our own nose).

This world is coming to an end. Civilization is grinding to a halt.

Isn't it a pity?

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1

Hello Everyone,

I visited Matt Savinar's website and found this most interesting of articles from the New York Times which suggests that the dissolution of the United States of America is already occurring at a subtle and almost imperceptible level:

California Split

By GAR ALPEROVITZ

Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear that California is not simply another state. “We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,” he recently declared. “We have the economic strength, we have the population and the technological force of a nation-state.” In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “We are a good and global commonwealth.”

Political rhetoric? Maybe. But California’s governor has also put his finger on a little discussed flaw in America’s constitutional formula. The United States is almost certainly too big to be a meaningful democracy. What does “participatory democracy” mean in a continent? Sooner or later, a profound, probably regional, decentralization of the federal system may be all but inevitable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/opinion/10alperovitz.html

This is exactly the sort of message that I would never expect to read in the New York Times. The inevitability of America's collapse is something which I accepted based upon common sense and historical grounds decades ago. The United States of America is by no means an immortal nation, nor does it merit immortality.

But there was something else in this article which really caught my attention:

If the scale of a country renders it unmanageable, there are two possible responses. One is a breakup of the nation; the other is a radical decentralization of power. More than half of the world’s 200 nations formed as breakaways after 1946. These days, many nations — including Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Italy and Spain, just to name a few — are devolving power to regions in various ways.

Here is a dramatic evidence that the collapse of civilization is occurring right now, right in front of our nose. All of these nations which are breaking apart into smaller nations indicate that civilization is dissolving away. Iraq is the latest example of a country breaking apart, though in Iraq's case the civilization has collapsed because of the aggressive action of an outside force (George W. Bush, liberator of Muslims worldwide, excluding the Saudis).

The story of America's breakup is described:

Regional devolution would most likely be initiated by a very large state with a distinct sense of itself and aspirations greater than Washington can handle. The obvious candidate is California, a state that has the eighth-largest economy in the world.

So we really ought to pay close attention to California. If things really began going bad in the United States -- for any reason -- California might assert its independence from Washington, D.C. How much longer could America exist as a nation after California's seccession from the union?

Vermont has already whispered about secession (http://www.vermontrepublic.org/) but this is just talk. The loss of Vermont would not dissolve the United States. The loss of California, on the other hand, would. California is wealthy and powerful enough to pull this off, too, under any circumstance in which the American federal government has weakened and become ineffective.

The world seems to be coming to its end. Thank God for the end of this world. I look forward to the next world and am willing to wait as many millions of years as it will take for Nature to fix this mess that humankind has created.

David Mathews
http://www.geocities.com/dmathew1