Think Al Gore is Too Soft? Join This Climate Change Cult!

Written by Michael A. Weber

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, a handful of deniers manage to keep arguing about the existence, causes, and likely outcomes of global warming. Not to be outdone by this conventional irrationality, we have a few oddballs on the ‘believing’ side of the fence too.

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, a new-age religious cult based out of Yelm, Washington, makes exaggerated, doomsday predictions about global warming to instill fear in its followers and convince them to build underground shelters to protect from the “Days to Come.“

According to the prophesies made by the spiritual school, the human population at the end of 2012 will be two-thirds what it is now, and those who survive in the long term will do so by stocking up on food, water, and medical supplies and by having an underground shelter to protect them from the dangers of a rapidly changing earth.

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, or RSE, was founded in 1987, and its teachings date back a decade further. The lessons are based around the concepts of tapping into the forgotten God within oneself, being able to create one’s own reality, and using one’s mind to perform superhuman abilities. Supposedly the teacher is a 35,000-year-old warrior from Lemuria who is being channeled by a 62-year-old woman named JZ Knight.

Ramtha students were behind the pseudo-science documentary What the Bleep Do We Know!? , which purports to inform us about quantum physics and the subjective nature of reality, yet could not even accurately tell us what percentage of the human body is composed of water.

While so-called prophets have been making doomsday prophecies for centuries, Ramtha’s predictions take on a unique form of sophistication. Their claims are masked as science, which has attracted followers who are not only wealthy and credulous, but surprisingly intelligent, creating an aura of credibility.

They can not seem to keep the prophecies consistent even from one lecture to another, but the scare tactics are generally rooted in a combination of climate change exaggerations and economic collapse straight out of New World Order. In Last Waltz of the Tyrants, their book of predictions for the ’90s, Ramtha told of the financial collapse we would see in the ’90s and explained how using cars has created a hole in the ozone layer, which is simply not true.

When none of the catastrophes came to fruition in the ’90s, they turned their scares toward 2012 and are using reports that recent hurricanes and floods have likely intensified due to climate change as evidence that the world as we know it has only a few more years.

Listen to some incoherent babbling here:

One might ask, “So what? They have some controversial new age views, but at least they are concerned with the planet! They’re an ally!” That could have been the case. But these money-grubbers, who charge thousands per year for their students to retain their invitation to the doomsday party, have instead decided that convincing their followers to move to Yelm and build underground shelters is a far bigger priority than actually trying to stop climate change from occurring (so much for them being able to “create their own realities”).

McKenna, the town neighboring Yelm, conveniently has a business run by Ramtha students called the Survival Center, which sells Ramtha books, emergency supplies, and will build you a fully stocked 5-room underground shelter for the low price of $1.5 million! The survival center claims to be independent of RSE, but it’s anyone’s guess where the profit from the store goes.

So the next time someone tells you that climate change is just a paranoid doomsday embellishment, you can show them the IPCC’s accurate and frightening most recent findings and then tell them that if they’re looking for crazy and exaggerated, you’ve got just the group for them.

Oh, and if money is still burning in your pocket after purchasing that bargain of a bunker, you can always pay $30,000 to speak one-on-one for an hour with Ramtha him/herself.

Photo Credit: lonesome:cycler on Flickr under Creative Commons license.

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Struggling Americans Forced To Work Extra-Dimensional 4th Shift

Fourth shift workers commute perpendicularly across the space-time continuum to pay off mounting credit card debt.

CINCINNATI—According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Labor, skyrocketing consumer prices coupled with stagnant wages have forced many Americans to work a fourth shift in another dimension in order to make ends meet.

The extra-dimensional shift, which occurs on a time axis at right angles to that of normal reality, allows American workers to supplement their incomes, while still maintaining the morning, afternoon, and overnight shifts they need in order to stave off bankruptcy.

"The maximum 24 hours of possible work time offered by our plane of existence is simply not enough to provide a living wage in the current economic climate," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao wrote in a letter introducing the report. "These difficult circumstances have compelled 76 percent of the American workforce to seek additional hours in an alternate space-time dimension, where more competitive pay can help them to avoid years of crippling debt."

Many cash-strapped citizens such as Glenn Vernacini, a master welder at the GE aviation plant in Evendale, OH, have welcomed the opportunity to pad their income by working extra shifts in lateral time, only to return at the exact same moment they left. Vernacini, however, admitted that his regular trips to the alternate universe have taken their toll.

"It's hard, but what other option do I have?" Vernacini said. "Having every atom in my body split and retranslated into a different form of matter just to make a few extra bucks isn't exactly my idea of fun, but my family needs to eat."

"I age an extra eight hours every time I work the fourth shift, and it's really starting to wear me down," Vernacini continued. "And having to buy a new shirt every time my body is flattened out to 4,000 times its usual surface area is one more strain on my budget that I don't need."

Some businesses have already installed a rip in the space-time continuum in their break-room areas so that employees can report for work in the other dimension as soon as their Earth shifts end. People who regularly work the fourth shift have reported that the tasks they perform are more or less exactly the same as during their other shifts, though they have to contend with frequent plasma storms and occasionally meet themselves leaving for one shift as they arrive for another, which can be demoralizing.

"The worst part about my job in the other dimension is trying to digest the silica-based food product they serve in the cafeteria," said Thomas Kinney, a line inspector who takes on a fourth shift three days a week at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in alternate Atlanta, GA. "It's probably the most painful part of working a fourth shift. That, and not getting to see my kids grow up."

People across the country have reported similar problems associated with working extra hours in another dimension. The biggest complaint arises from the fact that work time continues in the fourth shift when the employee is not working there. This often results in workers arriving to find that they are far behind in their labor and have to stay longer in the alternate dimension in order to catch up.

"This is just another big 'screw you' to hardworking Americans," said single mother Laura Tanner, who often works concurrent fourth shifts as both a cashier at an area Citgo station and a nursing home caregiver. "Did you know my employer doesn't cover my health insurance while I'm in the other realm? And just yesterday I arrived at my alternate work and, looking at the schedule, discovered that I had somehow convinced myself to pick up my own fourth shift the following evening. What am I supposed to do about that?"

An economic stimulus package from the other plane of existence is expected to provide some relief to those who work the extra-dimensional shift. However, most American workers remain skeptical that the plan will provide any real help, as it is slated to arrive just after it is spent.

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