How does communism or whatever solve climate change?
There are some serious question marks that appeared when reading that essay. They first emerge when it is talking about fossil fuels being something we need in typical peak oil fashion, then it starts comparing ocean ph to human blood...
China is the biggest polluter in the world, but they're also the biggest investor in sustainable energy. In the short term, they're massively increasing production of lithium batteries, solar cells and smart grid technology. In the medium term, they're pouring money into thorium, pebble bed and fusion reactor technology. They're not doing this out of any altruistic impulse, but because bankrupting the oil industry will be spectacularly profitable.
The prices of solar panels and lithium batteries are plummeting, to the point that sustainable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in many places. Solar cells cost $15/Wp in 1998, $8/Wp in 2008 and under $1/Wp today. Lithium batteries have followed a similar price trajectory. Tesla's new Gigafactory will produce more lithium batteries than all existing factories combined; three new factories by LG Chem, Foxconn and BYD will double that again, all before 2020.
When low-carbon technology is the cheaper alternative, the unstoppable wheels of capitalism do all the hard work. People involved in the renewable energy industry are remarkably laid back about climate change, because they can see how quickly the transition is happening. The bottleneck now isn't technology, politics, or economics, but how quickly we can build factories. We literally can't pour concrete fast enough, which is really saying something if you've seen how fast the Chinese can erect a building.
Most of us can remember what life was like before smartphones and the internet. In the space of two decades, our daily life was completely transformed by new technology. Gimmicky gadgets straight out of science fiction became so ubiquitous that now we can't imagine life without them. Sustainable energy technology today is about where communications was in 2003 - everyone has got dialup modems and 3310s, but broadband and the iPhone are right around the corner. In about twenty years time, you'll be trying to describe the smell of petrol to a teenager and they'll look at you with a mixture of confusion and pity.
I find it a mixed bag. There are a few subjects where the bias is not towards rationalism but towards cultural Marxist/ post-structralist stances, which regardless of your opinion of it you have to accept is not objective (like rationalism strives to be, if not is) but a political ideologies. Some of which contradict the rationalist stance. Which would be fine, apart from when you call yourself rational wiki it comes across as an obnoxious appeal to irrelivant authority.
How so? Rationalwiki takes the stance that it the conclusions all well informed people should come to as the rational and skeptics conclusion, it isn't, it is frequently articles are just left wing popularism. None of what I said is wrong.
The example I always think of is that the 'healthy at every size' article was for a long time heavily in favour of it where the medical profession stance is that there is no such thing.
A friend showed my this recently. Try to excuse the forgive forget bullshit at the beginning, the video is actually quite interesting. I'd like to hear some opinions or information about it.
>>83107 It appears that the people in control of the remaining 'Anonymous' news channels have sunk to the level of Godlike Productions, that's not particularly interesting, seems inevitable in retrospect. That is what you meant, right? I tried to skip through the chemtrails rubbish at the start but it seemed to go on for the entire video, so I can only conclude ...
I wouldn't mind if RationalWiki called itself "Well Informed Leftist Wiki" instead, because that's what it is.
I agree with most of what's on there, but it pisses me off that it claims some kind of neutrality and objectivity when it's blatantly biased. Some of the articles are intolerably fucking smug, too, because internet lefties are just like that.
Winds me up that people don't realise gloating over a flimsy right wing straw-man does absolutely nothing to win support. We can thank everyone who participates in that kind of circle-jerking, left and right, for our currently so entrenched and bitterly divisive state of affairs.
>>87949 >I wouldn't mind if RationalWiki called itself "Well Informed Leftist Wiki"
Surely the two are synonymous?
>intolerably fucking smug, too, because internet lefties are just like that
Seriously though it does baffle me how left-wingers continue to think, or not as the case may be, that calling anyone who votes Conservative a rude name is a good idea. It's not all of them, but a lot of the pleb-lefties are just wankers, well meaning wankers, but even so.
The ones I always remember getting right up my fucking nose are the ones that contradict with what is by definition 'rationalism'.
I remember for a long time them being full on 'fat shaming by doctors is real, healthy at every size, intesectionalists unite' thankfully that situation has at least improved.
Mind you wikipedia can't even state the correct date for when the first bomberman game was released without someone editing it back to the wrong one so I'm not sure what standard you can realistically expect from a site that contains debatable topics and anyone can edit.
>>88504 Wikipedia's problem is that most people who know better would prefer to disparage Wikipedia rather than spending that same effort engaging in the editing process (which by the way needn't start and definitely doesn't end with pressing the edit button).
And there's no way Wikipedia doesn't state the correct date since there are a bunch of different dates given depending on where you look with different reasoning behind them. You're unhappy that one info box doesn't contain your preferred date.
The edit war is based on the fact that hudsonsoft US nintendo team released a statement say 30 years of bomberman in 2015. This issue is that is the date that bomber man came out in the US, on the NES. The game was actually released 2 years earlier on the MSX (and inbetween multiple other systems) everywhere but in the US (although rebranded as Eric and the floaters in Europe because glorifying terrorism was considered a moral concern). There are paragraphs of people arguing quite logically and rightly that 1983 is clearly the date on the edit page, as they bloody owned the game before 85. But then US yards change it back to 85 because that's what the statement they've over generalised says that none of them have ever justified.
What makes this weirder is that the first game of the series is rightfully labelled on its page the 1983 game because you can't argue it first came out on a port when it is a clearly and objectively defined in a way the franchise wasn't at that point.
