This Is The End

In which I ruminate on the End Times.

(Posted 2015-10-20 18:06:30 +0000)

Disclaimer: I am not a prophet.

With that safely out of the way, let me just say that there’s been a lot of things on my mind lately:

• The Highway Trust Fund runs out of money on October 29.

• The Federal debt ceiling will be reached by mid-November, even with extraordinary measures in place. That’s according to the U.S. Treasury (PDF), the Congressional Budget Office, and the Bipartisan Policy Center. (Stan Collender is calling this the “fiscal abyss”.)

• The Federal government runs out of money on December 11.

• Style seems to be winning out over substance in the presidential race, and a Trump presidency — which I feel would be disastrous — is increasingly a possibility. More generally, the US is swinging away from rational thought and scientific proof.

• Methane plumes that are almost certainly the result of frozen methane clathrate decomposing are showing up off the Pacific Northwest coast — a harbinger of a rapid acceleration in climate change. (Personally, I don’t expect the polar ice caps to survive past 2050.)

• Record ocean temperatures across the planet are causing coral bleaching events — essentially, dead coral reefs — across the globe.

I don’t believe any of this is the result of any prophecy, or any outside and/or supernatural forces.

I do believe that we’re in for a very bumpy ride for the next century or so, and I’m starting to doubt we’ll come out the other end.