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Carbon Emissions compared to what? This is my main issue with The Atlantic's take on modern journalism. All finger pointing and no objective comparison.

Melingo 4y ago
Comparison why? We are in a state that every emission is a problem. And if you have a particular technology which create megatons of CO2 but does nothing for society besides transering money from a lot of people to less and less people what does a comparison matter?
- mike_d 4y ago
  > We are in a state that every emission is a problem. Some things will forever burn dinosaurs, like a diesel generator keeping a hospital going in a grid down situation for example. While cryptocurrencies might not rank as important as a hospital to you, the people fleeing Russia who couldn't take rubles with them or the people of Venezuela who can't trust the banking system have a very different opinion. Should crypto move to non-PoW systems or use renewables? Absolutely. But some CO2 generation is worth the value crypto brings.
  - Melingo 4y ago
    Ah yes the few rich and digital smart people who are fleeing some country. One of the best arguments for crypto... Just that it's as easy or hard to even exchange the local currency with crypto in the first place is probably as harder than getting us dollar or euro...
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    The only reason that is possible is that cryptocurrency is underregulated in the countries they are fleeing to, not because of any magical properties of Bitcoin. Those countries will soon regulate it to stop money laundering, making it completely useless.
- lowkey 4y ago
  * Bitcoin mining is by far the largest cryptocurrency consumer of electricity. * The majority of Bitcoin mining is done exclusively using clean renewable energy sources. * Bitcoin mining uses a higher percentage of renewable energy than any other industry. * A huge amount of Bitcoin mining is also done in partnership with energy utilities in a demand-response model where miners go offline immediately if grid demand spikes and come online exclusively during periods of excess electricity supply that would otherwise go to waste. By this mechanism, Bitcoin miners, for example in Texas, actually make the grid more stable and economically enable utilities to provide excess capacity to manage fluctuating supply and demand. * Bitcoin mining uses electricity to secure the network and protect billions of dollars worth their depositor's savings, allowing Bitcoin savers to avoid counter-party risk and enjoy a 100% reserve ratio, unlike say a fractional reserve bank that speculates with their depositor savings. > We are in a state that every emission is a problem. Notably, the currently dominant global reserve currency is protected, not by clean energy and mostly not even by electricity which has the potential to come from clean and renewable sources. The US military protects the value of the US dollar. * The US military is not just the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the world, they are the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the history of the world. * The US military consumes something on the order of 1 million times the energy of Bitcoin mining, mostly from greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels. * In 2007 Department of Defense consumed over 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year alone along with almost 30,000 GWH of electricity. * If the US military were a country it would rank 34th in the world in oil use and 58th in the world by electricity use [0]. I often hear criticisms about how bad Bitcoin mining is for the environment, but rarely hear any concerns about the energy used by the military. Why is that? If we are going to ban energy use, wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize the largest and most polluting users? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_States_military#:~:text=The%20Department%20of%20Defense%20uses,(23%2C000%20L)%20per%20day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta....
  - Melingo 4y ago
    You are strawmanning... You don't know if I wouldn't criticize this too but it's about crypto and not your military. Also the green washing of crypto is also dishonest. Crypto is primarily using dirty electric and we're not they actually take clean and good energy away from others because it's buying power is decoupled from the local energy market.
coldtea 4y ago
Why compare it? It's not like it's needed in the first place. It's like asking "Tumor is bad compared to what?"
lowkey 4y ago
See my comment down-thread. Certainly not compared to the US military that protects the value of the US dollar.
- Melingo 4y ago
  The us military is probably doing slightly more like providing jobs, protecting people etc and not just money. Independent of this as usual: of course someone should also review the energy usage of everything including the military. We are talking here about crypto and not military
  - lowkey 4y ago
    > The us military is probably doing slightly more like providing jobs, protecting people etc and not just money. Slightly more, like for example, killing over 1 million Iraqis over a lie about WMD, or bringing freedom to the people of Libya which resulted in the country going from the highest per capital standard of living in Africa to one of the poorest and one that now features open-air slave markets? Notably both Iraq and Libya had the audacity to try and trade their oil in something other than US dollars. I don’t think it is a coincidence that every single country that tried to trade oil in any currency other than USD this century was rewarded with an invasion by the US military. That is simply the US military doing it’s job in protecting US dollar hegemony. > Independent of this as usual: of course someone should also review the energy usage of everything including the military. But you still haven’t explained why we should prioritize banning Bitcoin mining over say banning the US military. Especially when, by objective measure Bitcoin mining consumes less than 0.0001% of the energy of the US military, not to mention other externalities like the widespread death and destruction caused by the US military simply to protect the US dollar. > We are talking here about crypto and not military Perhaps, maybe we SHOULD be talking about the military. See my points above.
    - Melingo 4y ago
      [flagged]

Melingo 4y ago

Comparison why? We are in a state that every emission is a problem. And if you have a particular technology which create megatons of CO2 but does nothing for society besides transering money from a lot of people to less and less people what does a comparison matter?

mike_d 4y ago
> We are in a state that every emission is a problem. Some things will forever burn dinosaurs, like a diesel generator keeping a hospital going in a grid down situation for example. While cryptocurrencies might not rank as important as a hospital to you, the people fleeing Russia who couldn't take rubles with them or the people of Venezuela who can't trust the banking system have a very different opinion. Should crypto move to non-PoW systems or use renewables? Absolutely. But some CO2 generation is worth the value crypto brings.
- Melingo 4y ago
  Ah yes the few rich and digital smart people who are fleeing some country. One of the best arguments for crypto... Just that it's as easy or hard to even exchange the local currency with crypto in the first place is probably as harder than getting us dollar or euro...
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  The only reason that is possible is that cryptocurrency is underregulated in the countries they are fleeing to, not because of any magical properties of Bitcoin. Those countries will soon regulate it to stop money laundering, making it completely useless.
lowkey 4y ago
* Bitcoin mining is by far the largest cryptocurrency consumer of electricity. * The majority of Bitcoin mining is done exclusively using clean renewable energy sources. * Bitcoin mining uses a higher percentage of renewable energy than any other industry. * A huge amount of Bitcoin mining is also done in partnership with energy utilities in a demand-response model where miners go offline immediately if grid demand spikes and come online exclusively during periods of excess electricity supply that would otherwise go to waste. By this mechanism, Bitcoin miners, for example in Texas, actually make the grid more stable and economically enable utilities to provide excess capacity to manage fluctuating supply and demand. * Bitcoin mining uses electricity to secure the network and protect billions of dollars worth their depositor's savings, allowing Bitcoin savers to avoid counter-party risk and enjoy a 100% reserve ratio, unlike say a fractional reserve bank that speculates with their depositor savings. > We are in a state that every emission is a problem. Notably, the currently dominant global reserve currency is protected, not by clean energy and mostly not even by electricity which has the potential to come from clean and renewable sources. The US military protects the value of the US dollar. * The US military is not just the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the world, they are the largest single consumer of fossil fuels in the history of the world. * The US military consumes something on the order of 1 million times the energy of Bitcoin mining, mostly from greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels. * In 2007 Department of Defense consumed over 4.6 billion gallons of fuel per year alone along with almost 30,000 GWH of electricity. * If the US military were a country it would rank 34th in the world in oil use and 58th in the world by electricity use [0]. I often hear criticisms about how bad Bitcoin mining is for the environment, but rarely hear any concerns about the energy used by the military. Why is that? If we are going to ban energy use, wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize the largest and most polluting users? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_States_military#:~:text=The%20Department%20of%20Defense%20uses,(23%2C000%20L)%20per%20day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta....
- Melingo 4y ago
  You are strawmanning... You don't know if I wouldn't criticize this too but it's about crypto and not your military. Also the green washing of crypto is also dishonest. Crypto is primarily using dirty electric and we're not they actually take clean and good energy away from others because it's buying power is decoupled from the local energy market.

coldtea 4y ago

Why compare it? It's not like it's needed in the first place. It's like asking "Tumor is bad compared to what?"

lowkey 4y ago

See my comment down-thread. Certainly not compared to the US military that protects the value of the US dollar.

Melingo 4y ago
The us military is probably doing slightly more like providing jobs, protecting people etc and not just money. Independent of this as usual: of course someone should also review the energy usage of everything including the military. We are talking here about crypto and not military
- lowkey 4y ago
  > The us military is probably doing slightly more like providing jobs, protecting people etc and not just money. Slightly more, like for example, killing over 1 million Iraqis over a lie about WMD, or bringing freedom to the people of Libya which resulted in the country going from the highest per capital standard of living in Africa to one of the poorest and one that now features open-air slave markets? Notably both Iraq and Libya had the audacity to try and trade their oil in something other than US dollars. I don’t think it is a coincidence that every single country that tried to trade oil in any currency other than USD this century was rewarded with an invasion by the US military. That is simply the US military doing it’s job in protecting US dollar hegemony. > Independent of this as usual: of course someone should also review the energy usage of everything including the military. But you still haven’t explained why we should prioritize banning Bitcoin mining over say banning the US military. Especially when, by objective measure Bitcoin mining consumes less than 0.0001% of the energy of the US military, not to mention other externalities like the widespread death and destruction caused by the US military simply to protect the US dollar. > We are talking here about crypto and not military Perhaps, maybe we SHOULD be talking about the military. See my points above.
  - Melingo 4y ago
    [flagged]