I've been just casually browsing this discussion, but your comment stands out as an example of the kind of mental gymnastics people are playing to try and justi

I've been just casually browsing this discussion, but your comment stands out as an example of the kind of mental gymnastics people are playing to try and justify something so obviously wasteful. As was pointed out upstream, capital and resources are required to get a solar panel, and if its output is directed to something frivolous like crypto mining, those inputs are being wasted. The fact that there remains unused energy from the sun is completely orthogonal to the waste that is happening. To be clear, I'm less passing a judgement about the efficiency of crypto than I am pointing out that crafting objectively absurd arguments about why it is not actually wasteful helps nobody.