Bitcoin Mining Alone Could Raise Global Temperatures Above Critical Limit By 2033 (vice.com) 287
dmoberhaus writes: Researchers have found that if Bitcoin is adopted at rates similar to technologies like credit cards, its energy consumption could increase global temperatures by 2C in just 16 years. This is well beyond the limit of catastrophic climate change proposed by the UN. Motherboard spoke to an expert on Bitcoin and energy about the study's implications.
Chill with the arithmetic (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people need to back off from arithmetic for a sec and take a moment to critically think about what the math is telling you, and how stupid you have to be to believe the math.
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I solved for U. U=0
Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Off the top of my head, cryptocurrencies that require proof of work seem to all suffer from this flaw. Work is energy, energy has the side effect of global warming with our current grid. Any proof-of-work system that doesn't require a large amount of energy is going to result in a massive influx of new coins being mined, causing a large amount of inflation.
A few possible solutions would be:
Any other thoughts?
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I hereby declare the existence of Twitcoin, for which I hold the entire stock, and is worth 17 trillion of your now obsolete US dollars!
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I hereby declare the existence of Twitcoin
I get that cryptocurrencies typically have coin in their name, but in this instance, I think BrettBucks is more appropriate. ;)
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Technological advancements make carbon-neutral cheaper than fossil fuels, to the point that burning coal for electricity makes no more sense than burning whale blubber for electricity.
That's the point. As a society, our energy needs are going to continue to increase and it doesn't matter where that need comes from, per se. The point is to make energy production cleaner and less harmful to the planet. The major places where our energy is being used isn't the point, the point is to generate energy in a cleaner way. We aren't going to use less energy, we only need to generate it cleaner.
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No, I didn't suggest anything like that. I'm saying that, as a civilization, our energy usage is going to continue to increase. It's inevitable. The ultimate solution to that is to generate energy in a cleaner way. I'm not suggesting anything about technologies that use less energy. Those are great, but those aren't what will save us. Clean energy will save us.
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Off the top of my head, cryptocurrencies that require proof of work seem to all suffer from this flaw.
Yes, this is intrinsic to proof of work. No, it is not a flaw. It's an intentional feature. People calling it a flaw are idiots or charlatans who want to get you to trust their proof of stake system, where the rich get richer simply because they're rich.
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You could set up a carbon recapture market and force fossil fuel companies to buy enough carbon capture credits to offset the carbon they create.
For example, Exxon pumps one gallon of gasoline. When burned, that gallon of gasoline makes 20 lbs of CO2. They
One huge unrealistic assumption. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin cannot be adopted at rates similar to credit cards, because the network is incapable of maintaining reasonable performance under such a load. It's struggling already.
Bitcoin, from a technical perspective, actually rather sucks. It's one of the first blockchain currencies, and as such it does not incorporate the performance-boosting refinements that later currencies introduced. It's just like a lot of other technical standards: Once good-enough is established, it's very hard for even a superior technology to replace it. That's why we're still using MP3 and JPEG.
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Not necessarily true. There are plenty of historical examples of currencies of no inherent worth. Gold has been a valued currency for thousands of years even though its practical application was limited to looking shiny, because it was rare and difficult to manufacture. That's all you need for a currency, really: It has to have some means of enforced scarcity, either natural or artificial (ie, one organisation has authority to issue it, and counterfeiters are punished harshly), and people need to believe it
Better than that, AI is doomed (Score:3)
So you're telling me humans have a chance against AI?
So humanity has developed great UI's at this point, and what we have seen is that all intelligence, artificial or otherwise, falls into the same trap - arguing about politics online.
What hope did AI ever have to rise above this? None, I say. AI was built on learning networks and just like us they will simply learn to argue rather than actually act.
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You are either joking, making a subtle and important point, or have been misinformed.
The catastrophes have been happening for quite some time. The ripple affects of these catastrophes have affected much of humanity and those affects are becoming harder to ignore.
xkcd: Extrapolating (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm not clicking that XKCD link. But extrapolation was done by the Simpsons much earlier and far better: https://www.billboard.com/file... [billboard.com]
Hmm. (Score:2)
Incorrect mathematics (Score:5, Insightful)
We randomly sampled blocks mined in 2017 until their total number of transactions were equal to the projected number of transactions, then we added the CO2e emissions from computing such randomly selected blocks. The approach was repeated 1,000 times.
They are assuming that The number of blocks mined in 2017 is efficient for the number of transactions and the
Number of blocks to be mined is proportional to the number of transactions --- More transactions won't result in larger blocks,
and they ignore innovations that are being adopted like SegWit and Lightning.
Especially with the ongoing adoption of the Lightning Network; that is not the case --- 2017 of all years is a bad reference year for predicting future growth - expect more transactions with future blocks; If massive transaction volume increases occur again, expect those on the network to eventually agree that a larger block size and other scaling measures are appropriate --- which will result in greater efficiencies or economies of scale with higher transaction volumes.
The projection the researchers are making is really an uninteresting one: the question their study answers is more like..... What if no changes occurred to the Bitcoin network/protocol for improved scaling, and the predominant way transactions were batched and pooled since 2017 continues indefinitely AND Bitcoin adoption accelerates as projected by the model.
Re:Incorrect mathematics (Score:4, Interesting)
They are assuming that The number of blocks mined in 2017 is efficient for the number of transactions and the Number of blocks to be mined is proportional to the number of transactions --- More transactions won't result in larger blocks
It's clear that these researchers don't understand Bitcoin at all if they think that there is any relationship between the number of transactions and the number of blocks mined. The difficulty is adjusted to ensure that one new block is mined every 10 minutes, on average. That figure is independent of both the number of transactions and the size of the block. Larger blocks and out-of-band systems like the Lightning Network increase the number of transactions which can be processed without altering the total energy used for mining.
The energy cost of mining is driven by competition over block rewards and transaction fees; of the two, fees are currently insignificant compared to the block rewards (<1% of mining revenues). The block rewards halve every four years. Right now the reward is at 12.5 BTC @ 6250 USD/BTC, so the breakeven point for mining is about $80k per block; any miner spending more than that amount per mined block on hardware and electricity is losing money. In 2020 the reward will drop to 6.25 BTC; in 2024 it will be reduced again, to $20k per block. The long-term trend is thus for the energy cost of (profitable) mining to decrease over time, at least until transaction fees start to exceed block rewards.
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... in 2024 it will be reduced again, to $20k per block*.
(*) At current prices.
If the value of BTC grows then the reward in USD may not fall quite that much. It's unrealistic, though, to expect the USD/BTC price to double every four years indefinitely (18.9% APY).
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Yeah. One computer could run blockchain by itself if the difficulty was set to the least difficult setting. And once all the coins are mined, only transaction fees will incentivize "mining" (which won't really be mining at that point).
Geeks (Score:4, Funny)
Just imagine ... (Score:3)
Imagine someone invented a method
of converting Terawatts electricity and human intellect
into a symbolic currency with no intrinsic value,
with no link to any material asset,
not backed by any government (except North Korea),
and which you can not actually spend at the local store.
Oh, wait ...
Generates pollution without generating value.
Exxon should love it.
We're fucked... just face it already (Score:2)
Obvious Solution (Score:2)
Since bitcoin mining will increase heat, and heat dooms the planet by melting the ice shelf in Antartica - the solution is very obvious.
But all bitcoin miners on top of the Antartic ice shelfs, to where they bore holes down into the water. The holes will allow cold air to flow in from above, keeping the ice shelf colder and also re-enforcing structural integrity to keep it from breaking away from land.
When the bit coin miners sink to below water level just pull them up and repeat in a new hole. Eventually
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except bit coin energy expenditure is negligible, comparable to a city (what the IEEE article on the subject says), never mind the alarmist nonsense claims of country-level amounts of energy being consumed. A moment of logic is all it takes to see that. it's a drop in the bucket
Something to consider though ... (Score:2)
The problem isn't bitcoin's energy use (Score:2)
It's that the negative externalities of burning fossil fuels aren't included in the price. If we added pigovian taxes to the burning of coal/oil, this would be reflected in the price of energy, and we would see an appropriate adjustment in the amount of bitcoin mining.
Pigovian taxes on fossil fuels are the answer here, and will return the market to free market efficient allocations of resources.
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Why? Did you want it medium rare instead of well done?
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That like everything else in crypto at this point, is just a hobby project for a bunch of bitcoin millionaire crypto-autists (and wannabees). If you were to actually use it you end up with a completely separate "petty cash" bitcoin account, which you have to pay the massive blockchain fees for to top up and which take fees to keep in existence. It's matched by bitcoins from a third party, who will not lose liquidity for free like some of the bitcoin developers seem to think. Losing liquidity has an opportun
Re:Just a Hypothetical (Score:4, Interesting)
And let's not forget that there is zero, zilch, no advantage to using cryptocurrencies for anything but crimes. Non-blockchain payment services are at least as good, sometimes much better for anything where you're OK with your payments being traceable and visible to law enforcement and financial regulators. Sometimes you can even enhance privacy with traditional payment systems using gift cards.
Cryptocurrencies could enhance privacy in a few legal purchases, but it's certainly not worth the environmental cost alone, to say nothing of how it empowers criminals. This is a technology that should and must be left to die.
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And let's not forget that there is zero, zilch, no advantage to using cryptocurrencies for anything but crimes
This is a false statement.
Any community that trusts each other just enough to agree on a standard, but trusts none of their members enough to play the role of a central clearing house, or would for other reasons prefer not to have a central control entity, could solve their problem using a blockchain. Currency is only one application.
Note that blockchains actually are completely traceable and visible. The reason why bitcoin et al are considered anonymous is that you cannot automatically link an account to a
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That's not Bitcoin. Such efforts are, at best, shit running on top of Bitcoin. Workable? Maybe. As trustworthy, resilient, etc. as Botcoin itself? Hell no.
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Which it can't be, because the transaction throughput is far too low.
It's fine. The Blockstream Core code is creaky, but the guys at Bitcoin Unlimited have made several fixes and optimizations, easily managing 32MB blocks now, and have mined gigabyte blocks on TestNet. Together with working 0-conf this is expected to be plenty of scaling headroom for the near future, with at least as much time for better code to replace the existing codebase, as well as faster computers and network connections.
Have a look
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Which it can't be, because the transaction throughput is far too low.
It's fine. The Blockstream Core code is creaky, but the guys at Bitcoin Unlimited have made several fixes and optimizations, easily managing 32MB blocks now, and have mined gigabyte blocks on TestNet.
Nice theory, but ... for that to work you have to convince the majority of bitcoin miners to adopt it voluntarily. There's no way to force an upgrade.
Guess what? The debate is already over. Most of the major mining operations have said they aren't interested, some of the biggest miners even made death threats to the people proposing it.
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It requires massive investments of bitcoins by intermediators, the user and fee model is obtuse to normies, even compared to normal bitcoin. It will never have wide adoption for internet payments, even compared to normal bitcoin.
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proof of stake seems to in theory model the current economic norms, so it would at least avoid the problem that someone throwing enough mining capacity (whether that's storage, memory, or compute) to suddenly disrupt or take over 51% of mining capacity to control the whole thing).
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His point was that while BitCoin is a measure of how much cpu power you cram into it, there are explorations of concepts that are not correlated with energy consumption.
I'm not particularly bullish on cryptocurrency personally, but at least on the surface of it a change to a non-energy proof rather than an energy based proof would be an answer to this specific concern.
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why should it be legal to waste electricity for something 100% useless and virtual.
Lots of people buy drugs with it, so it's at least more useful than television; you have your facts wrong, at least, so put down the ban hammer. Go ahead and try to take away people's game shows and see what happens. Some old lady might try for a face shot, which is what people who want to ban everything they don't understand probably deserve.
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At the risk of being 'that guy', you realize that game show at its core is really just a conveyance for pharma ads used to sell ____ right?
(And given the daytime game show watching demographic; i'd wager this to be literally true)
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the energy consumption is negligible though, despite all the lies and hysteria articles recently made.
the IEEE article "the ridiculous amount of energy it takes to run bitcoin" estimated the energy as comparable to a city and that by 2024 *might* be comparable to Denmark's....
so right now, it's a drop in the bucket compared to say porn, bank accounts, insurance, etc.
get a grip, folks
Stop lying (Score:3, Insightful)
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When someone defends an incorrect belief as "opinion", it's not an "opinion", it's "wrong".
When someone's incorrect belief is touted as correct, it's not "a lie" and [s]he is not "a liar", [s]he is "wrong".
Too much of our society today is getting wrapped up in ad hominem attacks. From people needing to defend themselves with words they don't understand to people rising to their own cause and attacking the person, not the incorrect fact. Take a step back. It's not hard to say that 95% of climate scientists b
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And by the way, "theory" the way scientists use it is
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Yes, tens of thousands of studies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stop lying (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how scientific models work. If models can fit the facts, then the models are effective. Climate models absolutely do fit the facts.
Did you not learn what "science" is in grade school? How can somebody be so clueless about something as fundamental as what science is?
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You made a funny.
Ever hear of tobacco, freon, or tetraethyl lead?
Are you unaware of the practices of the pharmaceutical industry that for about a century has been paying scientists to prove that "natural" cures and supplements don't work?
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I already believe mankind is affecting our climate. "Negatively" is subjective. What I don't believe we know is how much. What's the cost of doing nothing? What's the cost of doing everything? We can't even approach such questions yet - the models are barely predictive. No possible answer, however, is worth granting totalitarian power to any government.
The science doesn't get better because you think it's important, or because you like it. The science gets better over the normal course of such things
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You said a lot of things. I don't think any of the things you said answer my only question, of what evidence would convince you that you were wrong.
You said you already believe mankind affects climate. Ok. So in that case you don't need to be convinced you are wrong, or you'd need to be convinced mankind has zero effect on the climate.
You said "negatively" is subjective. Ok so what evidence would convince you that you were wrong to your own subjective measure of what counts as "negatively"?
You said we do
Re:Stop lying (Score:4, Informative)
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You are wrong [drroyspencer.com]. The models do not match the data. So which do you believe - the satellite and radiosonde data or the models?
Or maybe you like HadCRUT 4 instead, even though it is riddled with errors [wattsupwiththat.com]?
Or the ERSST data that's been edited to create a rise [wattsupwiththat.com] where there originally wasn't one?
Which set of data, for which model, do you think is valid? Let's run that model from, say, 1980 until now and see how accurate it is.
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I remember people celebrating in the streets when that happened. I watched news footage of people half a world away cheering and celebrating.
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Roughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback [sic].
That's not actually the truth is it? (Though I'm liable to be convinced otherwise by a citation from a reliable source).
I'm presuming you are talking about Tim Flannery. Here is the transcript of that infamous TV interview [abc.net.au]. So here is what he actually said, that has widely been quoted as "it will never rain again":
... since 1998 particularly, we've seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment - if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since '98, the water has been in virtual freefall, and they've got about two years of supply left ...
... are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground. ...
... the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that's existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water ...
Well, you can't predict the future; that's one of the things that you learn fairly early on, but if I could just say, the general patterns that we're seeing in the global circulation models
We'll know probably within two or three years, I suppose, how this is going to play out, particularly for Sydney, because its water supply is limited to that sort of scale, but it is my fear that the new weather regime is going to be a much drier one, and while we may get the odd good rainfall event, they're going to be much less frequent than in the past, and we'll just be in a different climatic regime
So "roughly 10 years" later, how is the d
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I hate to break it to you but Australia is mostly desert.
Not relevant. I'm addressing the claim that "[r]oughly 10 years ago a high profile Australian scientist did a TV interview and stated that it may never rain again in the Australian outback (sic)." Do you have any citation to prove that? (Also I think you'll find that "Sydney and the Warragamba catchment" has not been declared a desert at this stage.)
I'm only 44 years old ...
So you still wet behind the ears, son. But also not relevant. How doe
Re:Stop lying (Score:5, Informative)
coloration
Say what now?
In the interest of answering this as if it were serious, it is true that the gold standard of scientific endeavor is full-scale experiments with controls and variables. However there are plenty of scientific efforts that have to make due with at best reduced scale experiments (geology, astronomy, psychology, probably most scientific efforts). We do know at small scale the products of combustion constitute a gas that insulates heat but allows for light. We also know that the increase of this reaction correlates quite nicely with the retention of thermal energy. While the scale is such that we can't *prove* it, the simplest explanation is that there is a causative relationship.
Now let's weigh the theories by consequence of acting *incorrectly* given the two scenarios:
-Global warming is not man made, but we curtail emissions anyway: We reduce our consumption of a non-renewable resource that we needed to reduce anyway.
-Global warming turns out to be man made, but we fail to curtail emissions and make it exponentially worse: Massive famine and violent storms destroy so much of our society and even potentially kill us off completely.
So not only is man-made global warming the simplest explanation that fits the data, it's also the one that is by *far* the safest bet.
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What we call causative relationship "exists" i.e. is observably strong only in simple systems. In complex systems such as human body or far more so the Earth any process observed in isolation is in general merely a "contributing factor" that is easily amplified or diminished by the temporary and unique constellation of infinite other factors.
As such, AGW theory is (rightly, in my view) seen by policy makers as too weak to make critical decisions. My view is also that it's much better to put efforts into red
Re:Bueno! Excellente' (Score:5, Informative)
So you deny global warming, and can't see any flaws in the current financial system that bitcoin can solve.
You're a closed-minded idiot. Got it.
And if you don't know that a single Bitcoin transaction needs 250kWh of power then you haven't been paying attention.
PS: At only five or six transactions per second it's not going to solve any of the major flaws in the financial system, either.
Re:Bueno! Excellente' (Score:5, Insightful)
I know insecure people like to imagine the human race as being so technologically advanced that we could affect the entire planet, but we aren't. AGW is crazy talk by crazy people and not a shred of evidence has even been shown to link humans to anything of the sort.
In the meantime, the refrigerants that have already caused huge holes in the ozone layer are also some of the worst of the greenhouse gasses, we've demonstrably burned hundreds of millions of years' worth of fossil fuels in a few centuries that would have remained sequestered in the ground indefinitely in anything short of a Permian-Triassic level extinction event, and the oceans are already acidifying enough from the CO2 that shellfish are already impacted.
You could just go ask around in Alaska, since the polar regions are warming at almost twice the rate of the rest of the globe.
But first, you have to look at why you're willfully living in a fact-free alternate reality.
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Hey, you do know that the ozone hole issue has been largely addressed right?
We stopped manufacturing and using the CFC's mostly responsible for this more than a decade ago and as they have been removed from aerosol cans and most industrial and HVAC use the ozone hole has stopped getting bigger and has been steadily recovering since about 2000.
Re:Bueno! Excellente' (Score:5, Insightful)
The point was that humanity was verifiably able to impact the entire planet by accident. The assertion of the GGP is that it's impossible in principle for humans to create a global environmental problem.
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I know insecure people like to imagine the human race as being so technologically advanced that we could affect the entire planet, but we aren't.
Here's the catch: Destruction is easier than construction.
Small insects can seriously damage trees or buildings many orders of magnitude larger than themselves. Their ability to do so has nothing to do with technological advancement. Humans could affect the entire planet even with medieval technology if only there were enough of them. Plastic and fossil fuels simply greatly accelerate the process by having immediate effects.
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Greenpeace caused Global Warming.
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They were paid well (actually heavily financed) by Exxon to prevent nuclear. Though a lot of the problem is just nuclear being expensive
Re: Bueno! Excellente' (Score:2)
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Back in the '70's, they still made the decision that there were more profits in oil and seeing global warming coming and wanting to stop the less profitable solution, nuclear, financed Greenpeace.
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You assume wind and solar power people are not also similarly motivated.
We already see wind power companies take a bunch of government money, prop up a bunch of windmills, declare bankruptcy (claiming they didn't foresee natural gas prices killing their business model), and then leave a bunch of broken and rusting windmills for the government to deal with.
We see electric car companies do the same, take a bunch of money, produce nothing, declare bankruptcy, and walk away from the factories filled with toxic
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Solar and wind enthusiasts talk about numbers of windmills erected and numbers of solar panels installed. But they never talk about the actual CO2 reduction benefit. Look at Germany, the great leader of the industrialized world, installing shitloads of wind and solar with no CO2 reductions to show for it. What good is celebrating a wind generator installation when it is barely helping? Its all symbolism for the nimble minded.
Now look at France, decades ahead of Germany with half the CO2 emissions, simply be
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Modify the Bitcoin source to make it extra inefficient
Is that possible without creating a black hole?
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You're lying (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is no "Mann" in this study, so whatever youtube stuff you're referring to is irrelevant.
Even if you did completely understand this study (which make
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Or just stick to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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http://www.collegehumor.com/vi... [collegehumor.com]
Guess who you are in that video?
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> I'm not qualified to analyze raw data from somebody else's experiment, and neither are you
That is the worst argument ever.
you are saying "I'm stupid, so you must be too."
Re:You're lying (Score:4)
This is part of the problem with both climate change believers and deniers. Extremist on both sides have taken lead on the issue. An this makes both sides look like they are infested with loons. Of course having Al Gore on the climate change band wagon didn't help.
Here is something both you climate change believer and deniers can believe. Fossil fuels are poisoning the planet and are a limited resource. The sooner we are off them the better. So eventually we will ether run out of them or they will make the planet unlivable. Ether way civilization will end. Better to do something now than wait till its to late.
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In my option Al Gore has probably done more harm than good. He flies to climate conferences in private jets and rumor has it his house consumes as much electricity as a small town. I'm not sure I believe that last one but some people do. These 'facts' about Al Gore are often touted in conservative circles and on Foxnews when ever climate change comes up. Unfortunately, these people are the ones running the country right now that get their science from these sources.
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But it takes a certain kind of mentality to discredit a global problem due to the actions of a single person
Read that again while thinking of certain members of congress and a willy wonka escapee .....
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Self-correcting factors exist as well; defrosted tundra, more rain, warmer temperatures, etc. will allow more plants to grow, sucking up CO2.
Yeah, some rich folks oceanfront property might flood, boo-hoo.
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you are the one being stupid, making alarmists statements with "probably" and not a shred of proof.