Sorry if you're coming in here hoping for a debate, I just want to hype a story I'm reading. 

There's a forum out there called "spacebattles" where a bunch of people are doing a collective work known as "An Entry with a Bang!" aka "BT/Clancyverse Round Robin Story Thread"
main story thread (I think)
related forum

As you might infer from the second title, it's a fan fiction crossover between the Battletech universe (in the year 3020) and the world of the Tom Clancy novels (2005; Ryan is President).  (And no, this doesn't alter BT's history any; the Clancy Earth just got cloned/teleported into the Periphery somehow.) 

Anyway, it doesn't update as often as I'd like (they never do) but it's really good if you like either series or even just science fiction in general (I would say I best fit the latter category). 

What finally caused me to make this thread was really sheer enthusiasm overload.  An event happened that I just HAD to share my excitement about. 

IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE STORY AND DON'T WANT SPOILERS I RECOMMEND YOU NO READ FURTHER.  Blacking/whiting out spoilers is about ten thousand percent harder than it used to be so people might discuss it openly. 

Start
While most of Comstar, along with most (but not all*) of the BT universe in general, is assuming "Motherlode" (Earth) to be a lost colony from the Star League era, one Precentor and her expert (just introduced in the last new posts) are coming closer to the truth about the fact that they are from longer ago than that. More importantly, this Precentor seems to genuinely believe in Comstar's supposed goals: the preservation and ultimate rejuvenation of the technical base, knowledge, etc. that are being lost. And she sees in Motherlode an opportunity for the Inner Sphere to get its shit together, even if they don't have to worship Comstar to do it. If/when she becomes aware that Comstar has been in fact DESTROYING others' efforts in the same direction, given what has been suggested (IMO) about the character of this Precentor, she will be PISSED. Perhaps pissed enough to ignite an internal split in Comstar comparable in scale to the Protestant Reformation, at LEAST. This would be completely awesome and I dearly hope that I am not totally off base in the promise I see in that scene.

* One of the spy organizations (MIIO?) has a man who is extremely close to the truth, which is that Motherlode is early 21st century Earth somehow cloned into the Periphery. But Earth itself is inching toward revealing the truth anyway.
End

I am a huge Battletech fan,  I will have to check this out....

I don't know anything about Tom Clancy novels, so this may explain why it confuses me on how these two match up.

I haven't really either, but it's basically what TV Tropes calls "Twenty Minutes Into the Future".  Main differences from today are: 
- It's 2005, natch
- Jack Ryan is the President
- Japan went crazy and started a war ... with Russia or China or something? 
- A lot less Mulsim terrorism, in fact IIRC at one point in the fic someone said something to the effect of everyone was still in kumbayah celebration mode after averting some Middle East crisis. 
- There's a small amount of sci fi stuff like a laser-based audio surveillance gadget (can "hear" through a window by measuring ... sound wave vibrations or something)

The idea is that although the Inner Sphere worlds obviously have access to all this future stuff (even though it's old to them), they don't have Earth's huge industrial base, intact knowledge base, scientists and whatnot, etc. etc.  And obviously Earth is initially in no shape to go on the offensive (lacking, you know, spaceships), but defensively attackers are going to be so ridiculously outnumbered that having crazy super armor and lasers and shit isn't going to let them walk all over us.  And then we get to start making that stuff ourselves, and it's a whole different ballgame.  It's not like the Inner Sphere is going to unite against us or anything. 

P.S.  Since I have your attention I'd like to apologize for abandoning that other thread.  Even if we weren't making much progress ... I just got distracted, and then procrastinated, and forgot about it entirely for days ... let me put it this way, I haven't even dared go in there because the procrastination reached critical mass and now I can't stand to face my misdeed.  Am I silly? 

Ah... makes sense then... that does sound interesting... small invading force "from the future" vs an indefinite force on earth.  Such a weird combo selecton though.  Of course we've got Phoneix Wright VS Prof Layton... so...

As for the PS, I wouldn't worry about it.  I mean lets be honest, that's probably the only way a debate from us is going to end unless it's something that's particularly proveable.

Seemed less a debate about the facts of the matter and more a philisophical debate on ones duty to defend one's self when the effort level is near effortless.  You believe that once someones proved it to enough people, they can stop, while I believe it's not person proven based but effort based.  You keep proving it no matter how many people you've proven up until it takes a decent amount of effort to convince a small amount of people... because it takes no effort and there is no reason to not pile evidence.