Bitcoin Mining Alone Could Raise Global Temperatures Above Critical Limit By 2033 (vice.com)

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.

Comments

Bueno! Excellente'

[Brett Buck]

One absurd fantasy pitted against another!

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Man-made warming is not a fantasy. Maybe you've been getting high on Republican propaganda, which is not meant to be taken seriously.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Man-made warming is not a fantasy.

Nope, it's a religion, with all the bad connotations there of, especially with the condemnation and persecution of unbelievers.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are easily trolled.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[lgw]

One absurd fantasy pitted against another!

I've never been interested in BitCoin in any practical way, but stories like this make me want to mine it - if it pisses off hipsters, it's obviously worth doing. Maybe I can leave my car idling for hours while my mining rig runs, just for extra impact.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[GameboyRMH]

Hipsters don't live on the Florida panhandle, those are some of the people this kind of behavior most recently "impacted," you denialist jackass.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's science. If you could convincingly show it's not the case you'd probably get a Nobel Prize.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Joce640k]

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'

[Dasher42]

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.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's science. If you could convincingly show it's not the case you'd probably get a Nobel Prize.

If there was any "science" behind global warming then we'd see nuclear power embraced widely and built up quickly. Instead we have this worship of the sun and wind as if they are gods. Nuclear power produces less CO2 than wind and solar power, do so with less material mined from the ground, and with fewer deaths from accidents and pollution.

If global warming were the threat they claim it to be then they should be able to do some simple math to figure out that we'd see far fewer lives lost with nuclear power now than hoping, praying, and worshipping wind and solar to save us later. This is some kind of cult that can't face the facts because it is counter to their religion.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Kaenneth]

Greenpeace caused Global Warming.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that individual businesses and special interests will act for the benefit of the common long-term good, and not for the benefit of short-term corporate profits

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Powercntrl]

I've never been interested in BitCoin in any practical way, but stories like this make me want to mine it - if it pisses off hipsters, it's obviously worth doing.

Modify the Bitcoin source to make it extra inefficient and create a fork called "RollinCoalCoin". I'm sure the IPO will be a huge hit with the red hat wearing crowd (and I don't mean the Linux distro).

Or plug in a few space heaters and buy Bitcoin on the dips from an exchange. Costs roughly the same and you don't have to worry about the mining hardware going obsolete in a month.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

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 metals and chemicals.

Nuclear power has proven itself to be low CO2, low environmental impact, reliable, and safe.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2018/08/why-i-favor-nuclear-power.html

If you cannot accept nuclear power as part of the global warming solution then don't be surprised if people cannot accept global warming as a real threat. Whatever threat nuclear power holds, be it another Chernobyl or Fukushima, or radioactive waste that won't decay for millions of years, does not compare in the least to what global warming threatens. If you fear nuclear power more than global warming then you have "scientifically" proven global warming to be no real threat at all, because nuclear power is not a real threat to anyone.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[lgw]

Modify the Bitcoin source to make it extra inefficient

Is that possible without creating a black hole?

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

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 because they were smart to go nuclear many years ago.

Anti nuke, wind and solar only idiots are as bad as climate change deniers. They deny the necessary role of nuclear.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[dryeo]

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'

[bobbied]

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'

[Your.Master]

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.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[TsuruchiBrian]

FYI you get extra bitcoins if you do it in an enclosed garage.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

why you're willfully living in a fact-free alternate reality

If "the human race [were] so technologically advanced that we could affect the entire planet['s climate]" then there would be no place left for their storm-god. And if a coordinated international effort is required to limit the consumption of life-threatening fossil fuels then someone else's anarcho-capitalist fantasies could not be realised either. Thus it follows 'logically' that AGW doesn't exist ... it just can't exist ... please don't let it be real ... it isn't fair!

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[LynnwoodRooster]

Does science use projections as the baseline of what is happening? Because if you look at page 4 of the IPCC report, you'll see this interesting footnote:

5 Present level of global warming is defined as the average of a 30-year period centered on 2017 assuming the recent rate of warming continues

Essentially, the climate today is the 30 year period centered on today, which means the last 15 years and the forecast coming 15 years, meaning that modeled results are as important to the definition of climate today as actual measured data from the past. I did not realize that science was founded on projections and potentials rather than actual data... If your model says it will be 3 degrees warmer in 15 years, then we can assume that today is 1.5 degrees warmer than it is - because the model is allowed to contribute half of today's actual data.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear is not as scalable. It will take a diversity of energy sources and efficiency measures to achieve sustainable energy

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Current development will likely end up with an estimated limit of 100 million transactions a second.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking nonsense. Slashdot usersâ(TM) idiotic fetishization of nuclear power is obscene.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[LynnwoodRooster]

Accumulated cyclone energy has been trending downward for nearly 30 years. A single event isn't "climate", it's an event - and there is no long-term indication that we have an increase in hurricane/cyclone energy (and, not altogether unexpected, tornado count and energy in the US is also dropping).

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Admitting that the hysteria over global warming is a religion does NOT have to mean denying greenhouse gas theory. Greenhouse theory is science; the religion part is automatically rejecting every real-world fix for the problem.

Humans engineered our way into the problem by emitting ancient carbon back into the atmosphere. We can engineer our way out of it again, with carbon-free energy sources and sequestration of carbon already in the environment.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Tjp($)pjT]

You understand Exxon was big in nuclear too, right. Exxon is a energy company not just oil. Exxon Nuclear made reactors and controlled their own fuel chain. Exxon Coal and Minerals too. And they are huge into renewable energy.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[dryeo]

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.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

When the adherents of the AGW religion follow the scientific method it will be science. Until then it is religioun and politics. Hint: they do not follow anything even resembling the scientific method.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[DethLok]

Yeah, sure, we stopped making CFCs...

https://www.bbc.com/news/scien...

Oops, except no, we didn't!!

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Tom]

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.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[MrL0G1C]

Oh come now, you're not going to let highly relevant facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory are you. Might have to mod you as troll.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[MrL0G1C]

Tell me about it, give any solid arguments against nuclear and there's a good chance you'll get modded as troll.

The risk gets shunned, and even after 3-mile island, Windscale, Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear proponents complain about the cost of safety measures. They like to insists then that nuclear is cheap although it wouldn't stand a chance without subsidies and then exclaim that renewables are expensive even though they can pretty much compete without the subsidies now and unlike nuclear, renewables get cheaper every year.

If you point out that cheap nuclear fuel is in short supply they will then proceed to espouse massively expensive methods like nuclear re-processing or ocean reclamation of uranium (requires huge resources).

And still no-one has come up with a good way to get rid of the waste cheaply and safely. No, not reprocessing, I said cheaply.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[bobbied]

Ok.. If you want to be specific, we stopped manufacturing and using CFC's which where chiefly responsible for the ozone depletion. Good luck getting a can of R-12 for your 1970 Ford's air conditioner. Or, be prepared to pay though the nose for a pound of R-22, which cost me over $50 a pound last time I had to get some into the 20 year old AC system in my house.

Cars have moved to R-134a for a reason, R-22 used to be standard fare for your HVAC system, but we use R-412 now. We used to dump CFC's into all sorts of aerosol cans because it was not flammable, but now you get propane and other much more dangerous propellants, or more likely moved the product into pump sprayers. What's more, we have mandated the destruction of CFC's instead of just releasing them. Now it is required to capture used refrigerants and either re-use them, or destroy them.

We have reduced our CFC emissions enough to stop the ozone depletion, and projections are that it will return to near normal by 2075.

Re: Bueno! Excellente'

[Joce640k]

What "development" is that?

Clue: There's no way to sign blockchains that have 100 million transactions a second

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[thegarbz]

So you double proved the GP's point. That humans can affect the climate both on accident and on purpose.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[DirkDaring]

Always 10+ years away. Always. Even after the 10 years passes, which has happened 3 times now (hi Al Gore), it's still 10+ years away.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[MrL0G1C]

You must be living on a different planet to the rest of us. You really have to be hugely ignorant to say that statement, there is very little wilderness left on earth for example - what is left is typically not arable land.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Not to mention the global mass-genocides of other species caused by humans.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who is so willfully ignorant of the fact that 7.6 _billion_ people now populate the planet and that most all access some technology that multiplies their pollution is incapable of rational thought. Population control has been (historically) a war|disease event cycle. Not so much of that anymore. We are smart enough to kill everything with us. Malthus had it right.

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[GameboyRMH]

It's a lie or at least bad math to say that accumulated cyclone energy has been trending downward for 30 years. It's rather flat overall for the last 30 years, and has decreased over the last 10 years due to natural variation:

https://www.skepticalscience.c...

I know the deniosphere loves to try to fit declining curves against this short-term spiky but long-term flat graph, but this technical number is not that important and the only one that doesn't show a clear upward trend. Hurricane frequency is steadily increasing:

https://phys.org/news/2013-03-...

Also hurricane intensity and power dissipation are sharply increasing:

https://www.skepticalscience.c...

These numbers are more practically relevant than accumulated cyclone energy, and you can see it where the rubber hits the road: in the clear upward trend in storm & flood damage costs, even against our improving preparedness:

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-...

Also while strong tornadoes are decreasing and tornado energy is flat, tornado count is steadily increasing:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc...

Re:Bueno! Excellente'

[bobbied]

As if proving stop lights are often times green says we can be sure that brake lights on motorcycles are red.

Proving one theory though experimental evidence does not mean we have or can prove an unrelated theory too.

Just a Hypothetical

[Anonymous Coward]

if Bitcoin is adopted at rates similar to technologies like credit cards

Which it can't be, because the transaction throughput is far too low.

A- for the effort though.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Edward Nardella]

The lightning network is a thing and has the potential to not only reduce energy consumption but also increase capacity.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[bill_mcgonigle]

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 at https://txhighway.com/ and try to fill that up first, then worry about throughput problems.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Pinky's Brain]

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 opportunity cost which would have to be paid.

An obtuse, costly, unusable fucking mess ... even by bitcoin standards.

Re: Just a Hypothetical

[Anonymous Coward]

LUL. We've being hearing this for 3 years now.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[sexconker]

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.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[NicknameUnavailable]

Quantum computers are also a thing and will obsolete bitcoin by 2023-2025. There is no secure post-quantum algorithm which is under 31kb/signature. There is no way to condense individual transaction akin to the lightning network while dropping the initiator's signature altogether without making it inherently centralized. At that point you might as well forgo the petabytes of data storage and analysis to verify each transaction and just leave it in bank databases - no additional security or decentralization either way. (To say nothing of the fact it will take several years to make the transition to post-quantum algorithms as it has to be initiated by each wallet-holder individually, so we're basically at the point right now where everyone has to start converting to post-quantum algorithms or it dies off entirely.) Every cryptographic professional knows this limitation, meaning everyone pushing Bitcoin is either ignorant or knowingly misleading people.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[h33t l4x0r]

Let's say somebody pays me with paypal. It's 3.6% plus another 3+% to eventually convert it to my local currency. So the banks are getting around 7% every time I get paid. That's not an argument for cryptocurrency?

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Tom]

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 person, but this fact is independent of the blockchain as a technology.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Anonymous Coward]

That's essentially an argument for needing more competition in the online payments and credit card processing marketplace. It says nothing about BitCoin itself, only about what services currently work with it. There is nothing that intrinsically makes it any cheaper, either to transfer, or to convert to local currency (it's not like we actually ship physical bills around regularly either; the currency you use online is an e-currency too for all practical purposes); the fees are lower now, but they fluctuate wildly. See September of '17 through March of '18, where transaction fees were steadily above $2, peaking at $55/transaction in December, and that's before the cost of converting to and from local currency (you might say "But I can use BitCoin directly and never exchange to local currency", but of course, the same argument applies to U.S. dollars in theory, but it doesn't work out in practice in most countries).

Sure, if you're making $10K transactions, fixed per-transaction fees hardly matter if they avoid percentage fees. But when you're making small purchases in the $20 range (using it as an actual currency), which is the vast majority of what people use PayPal for, paying $2 on the transaction fee is roughly twice what any credit card processor or PayPal charges. You could reproduce the same advantages by shopping around for online payment services or just accepting payment by check, ACH, etc. You might say "but those are inconvenient and almost no one uses them!", and I'd respond "So, same as BitCoin then?"

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[GameboyRMH]

No, Paypal's high fees are not an argument for cryptocurrency. Remember that the hard resource/administrative costs of operating or working with a cryptocurrency are not in any way cheaper than operating any traditional electronic currency. If a cryptocurrency is cheaper, that can only be due to three factors:

1. Regulatory circumvention
2. Externalized costs
3. Price gouging by traditional payment providers

If it's 1 and/or 2 you're only saving money by shifting the costs elsewhere (onto crime victims or other miners and/or simply onto the environment), and for 3 it's just a matter of shifting to a different provider if regulatory capture isn't preventing one from arising (this is where most of the higher costs of Paypal are vs. cryptocurrency). There are other traditional payment providers out there with 2~4% fees, which is also the ballpark for cryptocurrency exchanges.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[GameboyRMH]

No, that statement is true, I said cryptocurrencies, not blockchain technology in general. There are a few positive niche uses for a blockchain in notary services and computer security.

Your hypothetical scenario makes no sense when applied to currency or payment in a sane world. There is no practical reason not to have a central control entity. Central control entities have been handling our currency and payments pretty decently overall for centuries. They have screwed up a few times, but it's a small price to pay compared to the environmental and criminal costs and risks of cryptocurrencies, to say nothing of its slowness and general inefficiency.

When your credit card number gets stolen, it's the payment provider's responsibility to restore the money you lost. Stolen wallet files or payments made to addresses with typos in them are gone forever.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Tom]

No, that statement is true, I said cryptocurrencies, not blockchain technology in general.

And the example I gave is for a currency. Every other currency has a centralism problem - someone prints the money (or digitally creates it). If you don't want that, but don't trust anyone enough to hold the keys, a distributed concept works.

There is no practical reason not to have a central control entity.

Why not?

Central control entities have been handling our currency and payments pretty decently overall for centuries.

There are many people who disagree and point out a) the financial crisis and b) the power of banks, which goes far beyond what a simple payment service should have.

environmental and criminal costs and risks of cryptocurrencies, to say nothing of its slowness and general inefficiency.

yes, there are downsides. I am not a cryptocurrency fan. But I do point out that there are legitimate uses.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's run a thought experiment. Say you believe that children shouldn't be slaves, so you oppose China's labor policies. Problem is, you live in China. People around the world want to send you money to fight child slavery, but they can't send you anything physical. You might think "oh just use PayPal or something". Well it turns out China has a big influence on western companies, so they can actually pressure financial institutions to not process payments to you. How do you get funding for your cause? You act like a criminal. You get payment and launder it as if you were selling narcotics.

There are absolutely legitimate and very important reasons for total anonymity. Not everyone breaking the law is working against the best interests of humanity.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[GameboyRMH]

Most financial crises have nothing to do with a currency's central control entity, and as should be obvious the power of banks is a completely unrelated problem. The solution that cryptocurrency could offer is looking for a problem to solve, while bringing along many new problems of its own.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[GameboyRMH]

There are absolutely legitimate and very important reasons for total anonymity. Not everyone breaking the law is working against the best interests of humanity.

True, you have a good point here. There are technologies that empower criminals but also help people who are breaking the law in the interests of humanity. In these cases I think it's important to weigh how these technologies are used for good and bad in the real world in order to assess their benevolence or malevolence.

Darknets, for example. I have weighed the positives and negatives here and come out in support of darknets. They're used by all kinds of criminals including pedophiles and terrorists to evade law enforcement surveillance and carry out terrible crimes in a slightly more secure manner, but they're also used by journalists and dissidents around the world to evade surveillance by people who would persecute or prosecute them for thought crimes and gain access to information censored by authoritarian governments. There aren't any similarly good alternatives for replicating these positive uses by other means without including the negatives. I think the good outweighs the bad there by a small margin, so I support darknets.

Now onto cryptocurrencies. The most common uses of cryptocurrencies are cybercrime finance including ransomware payments, purchasing things that are illegal mostly for good reasons, as an instrument for gambling disguised as investment, and committing white-collar crimes like routing around foreign exchange controls, running fraud investments, and evading taxes. Another big downside is its incredible inefficiency leading to ludicrous energy consumption when the planet can least afford it.

On the positive side, you could use it to enhance privacy in some harmless purchases that you'd rather not share with your credit card processor and their marketing affiliates (although gift cards can be used to achieve much the same thing in many cases), and I suppose you could use it to get money to benevolent institutions inside authoritarian regimes although I've never heard of it being used this way - most authoritarian regimes have outlawed cryptocurrencies. These are things you couldn't do with an alternative, the libertarians getting their jollies by buying fidget spinners from Overstock with Bitcoin don't count because that could be done just as well with a credit card. These positive uses also seem to be vanishingly rare. So to me the negatives appear to greatly outweigh the positives with cryptocurrencies, which is why I think they're a bad idea.

Re:Just a Hypothetical

[Tom]

Most financial crises have nothing to do with a currency's central control entity,

They very much have to do with a financial system built around banks as central entities. A currency used as a barter instrument would not be subject to this kind of speculation.

while bringing along many new problems of its own.

Agreed on that. The only thing I disagree with is this black/white view of the world, from both sides. Cryptocurrencies are neither the salvation nor the end of the world. They are just one more thing in the toolbox.

Total waste of resources

[Anonymous Coward]

In a time were scientists warn about global warming for decades we should by all means avoid this :-/

Attempting humour

[Anonymous Coward]

I would've got first post if it weren't so expensive to complete the transaction in time.

Chill with the arithmetic

[reanjr]

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.

Re: Chill with the arithmetic

[sexconker]

I solved for U. U=0

Re: Chill with the arithmetic

[Anonymous Coward]

U=f4got

Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work systems

[dasunt]

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:

• Use a cryptocurrency system that (a) doesn't require proof of work and (b) whatever it does require is not energy intensive.
• 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.

Any other thoughts?

How would Lightning affect that?

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to this is the Lightning network, no?

Re:How would Lightning affect that?

[Pinky's Brain]

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.

Should be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

It's literally a waste of energy.
If it's not legal for me to leave my water hose open all day every day, wasting water, why should it be legal to waste electricity for something 100% useless and virtual.

Re:Should be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Your legislature has to give a fuck before this can be made illegal. Don't expect anything to done about it in the next 10-20 years.

Re:Should be illegal

[Edward Nardella]

Small point, while it may be illegal for you to leave your water hose open all day every day. It is not illegal for you to buy water by the truckload or buy the rights to a water source and waste that water.

Re:Should be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be disingenuous. You know very well they're doing it for a reason.

Re:Should be illegal

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Should be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people buy drugs with it, so it's at least more useful than television

Seriously? Illegal drug market is your defense?

Re: Should be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only illegal because the city is selling you water below cost.

If they sold it to you above cost, like the electric company sells electricity, and charged you the sewage fees, the city wouldn't care.

If you did your own well you can run your hose as long as the well has water.

Basically, your analogy is garbage and you should feel bad.

Re:Should be illegal

[rogoshen1]

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)

Re:Should be illegal

[iggymanz]

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

Re:TF kind of story is this?

[DontBeAMoran]

Why? Did you want it medium rare instead of well done?

Some experts say

[Anonymous Coward]

Over sensationalism in popular media could possibly decrease the global iq by up to 3 points by 2033.

Lightning

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the Lightning network solve this?

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Brett Buck]

Use a cryptocurrency system that (a) doesn't require proof of work

      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!

Low Energy Cryptocurrency

[Edward Nardella]

There are several Cryptocurrencies that use proof-of-storage/space/capacity instead of bitcoins proof-of-work. There are also other low energy methods like proof-of-stake. Those may have the potential to be alternatives.

Re:Low Energy Cryptocurrency

[Junta]

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).

Re:Low Energy Cryptocurrency

[Alwin Henseler]

Energy = cost. No matter how you obtain that energy. For example solar panels, wiring, voltage converters etc. come at a cost, even the input (sunlight) is free. Same thing when having mining gear double as space heater. The waste heat may be useful, but it's still an expensive space heater.

High energy use for transactions = more overhead costs per transaction. Making small transactions relatively expensive. For that reason alone I'd expect better designed crypto currencies to replace Bitcoin at some point. It simply wouldn't be viable if another coin does the same thing(s) while using less energy.

Re:Low Energy Cryptocurrency

[Junta]

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.

One huge unrealistic assumption.

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once good-enough is established, it's very hard for even a superior technology to replace it."

So you're telling me humans have a chance against AI?

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[Anonymous Coward]

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 Cash likely can be adopted at those rates.

This ridiculous assumption is that exponential growth continues forever. What the foolish "researchers" claim is that bitcoin will suddenly eat up most of the world's electricity within 16 years. That's absurd, and won't happen.

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin (and neither all other so-called cryptocurrencies) can never be practical no matter how much patching is done!
Because it is just a (global) Ponzi Scheme, nothing else!!!

Sooner or later any/all practical applications thought/promoted/hyped about all cryptocurrencies will be found to be completely worthless/useless!!!
(Because that is what all scams give to their investors: NOTHING WORTH ANYTHING!)

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[SuricouRaven]

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 has value. A major government backing it up by requiring it in taxes and paying it in wages is certainly an aid in maintaining a currency, but it isn't essential.

Bitcoin is still a poor choice for a currency though. It's doomed to deflation for a start, any any economist will tell you that is a terrible idea. A healthy economy needs to experience just a small amount of inflation - too much leads to collapse, but no inflation at all makes it very difficult to secure credit needed for businesses to function and growth to occur. And deflation, well... good luck getting a loan in a bitcoin world.

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[Tablizer]

like a lot of other technical standards: Once good-enough is established [it's hard to replace with better ones.] That's why we're still using MP3 and JPEG.

How much loss in milliwatts-per-cat-video?

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin Cash? No.

The highest txn rate I've seen from them is maybe 25 txns/s from the Sept. 2018 stress-test. 2.1 million transactions in a 24-hour period. That's more like 24.3 txns/s but I'll give BCH the benefit of a friendly upward round.

You need to push over 40k txns/s to get close to one of the major CC companies. MAYBE LN (or another second-layer solution) can get you there, but you are still limited by the tnx rate of the underlying chain.

Ethereum looked promising until they pushed off full sharding until 2021. EOS is insufficiently decentralized. XRP is totally centralized.

Re:One huge unrealistic assumption.

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare Bitcoin to a bank account instead of a credit card and it begins to look a lot more viable. We're talking ACH / IBAN / SWIFT / Wire networks instead of credit cards. The properties are more similar (hard/impossible to reverse), and the scale and transaction sizes are more similar. Lightning network is more comparable to credit cards, and it is capable of credit card network transaction throughput.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

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. ;)

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[olsmeister]

One unit of work consists of converting 1 ton of carbon from our atmospheric CO2 into a solid form

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Edward Nardella]

There are other systems, like proof-of-storage/capacity/space and proof-of-stake. Those are both quite low energy consumption, especially the last one.

This is literally a load of horse shit

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could see through the steam emanating from this huge pile of horse shit, I could begin to see where to start pointing out the flaws in it.

xkcd: Extrapolating

[galabar]

https://xkcd.com/605/

Re:xkcd: Extrapolating

[sexconker]

I'm not clicking that XKCD link. But extrapolation was done by the Simpsons much earlier and far better: https://www.billboard.com/file...

Hmm.

[fluffernutter]

This makes me wonder what would happen if bitcoin were to become as common as credit cars AND electric vehicles were to become as common as ICEs.

My asshole alone

[Anonymous Coward]

My asshole alone could raise it too. Especially when I fart out 2 hockey sticks worth of anus gas in IPCC "scientists" face.

Re:My asshole alone

[Anonymous Coward]

So you admit you caused climate change and it is man-made, good job not even believing yourself.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why Reddcoin owners leave their Reddcoin wallet running 24/7 on their main computer without ever noticing a drain on their system or bandwidth.

They are very stupid!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't make brute force to a kind of problem that is exponential time.

Incorrect mathematics

[mysidia]

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

[JesseMcDonald]

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.

Re:Incorrect mathematics

[JesseMcDonald]

... 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).

Re:Incorrect mathematics

[mamba-mamba]

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).

Re:Incorrect mathematics

[mysidia]

If the value of BTC grows then the reward in USD may not fall quite that much.

That's true and increase in the value of BTC could definitely be expected in the case of crypto
transaction volumes reaching Credit card scales, since that implies much wider adoption:
and it would mean also increase the $$$ amount spend on equipment
and power before mining becomes unprofitable.

However.... there's no real basis for a strictly positive relationship b/w number of transactions and how much a BTC is worth.

Extrapolating an increase in BTC value far into the future to stay proportionate to number of transactions would be a huge
crapshoot, not a reasonable projection ---- fiat currencies don't even behave that way.

There's more than Bitcoin to it

[annamarina]

There are many lower energy consuming cryptocoins out there, so don't get too agitated about this news

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The entirely of the world's energy consumption and economy will raise the temperature by 1.5 C in 12 years. Ok, maybe that's believable. Climate change is real, but I don't know if that estimate is accurate. Assume for the minute it is.

But then bitcoin ALONE is going to raise it by 2C in 16 years? That's absurd. You're trying to tell me that suddenly mining bitcoin will become so profitable it'll dwarf the entire world economic energy usage? That means we'll suddenly burn more carbon on bitcoin than anything else in the world?

No. Not possible.

This is what happens when people think exponential growth doesn't stop. Of course it does, it always does. It's like looking at the growth rate of a child, and saying by age 40 your kid is going to be the size of the Empire State Building.

Whew

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been given to understand that any catastrophes that might happen as a result of global warming won't happen until long after I am dead anyway.

I have been happily ignoring the issue entirely because of that. I won't become interested until that changes.

Re:Whew

[Mark of the North]

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.

this isn't how bitcoin works?

[TheSimkin]

This is absurd.

Geeks

[kackle]

The geeks shall incinerate the earth.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of things to keep in mind though:

- The value of BTC influences the amount of hardware on the network. At a certain point, it becomes unsustainable to add more hardware. If the amount of hardware on the network were to double in one day, it would effectively halve the rate at which that hardware would be able to mine coins.

- Hardware advancements usually come with greater power efficiency and significantly increased hash rates. The difficulty increase from hardware advancements usually make the old hardware obsolete, and practically worthless to even keep running.

We've only see a massive increase in the power usage of Bitcoin because of the massive increase in value.

- There is little competition in the Bitcoin ASIC space, and no major tech company has yet to enter this space. A major increase in the value of BTC would likely lead to a major increase in hardware on the network, but also larger competitors in the ASIC space.

PoW definitely increases the carbon footprint initially, but that increase will only eventually be reduced.

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Stop lying

[DogDude]

Climate change is not an "absurd fantasy", you fucking liar. It's scientific fact.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it "man made" ?

THAT's not as much a scientific fact as a theory that we cannot verify because there is no way to re-run the experiment with different inputs and find out what the cause actually is. I get that folks generally swallow this as fact without so much as a blink of the eye, but it's not straightforward science or without contrary evidence. Remember, coloration does not prove causation, it only suggests it.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

The climate models only work when man-made inputs are included. Without man-made inputs, the climate models are very different (ie: wrong after ~1970).

Re:Stop lying

[lgw]

The climate models only work when man-made inputs are included. Without man-made inputs, the climate models are very different (ie: wrong after ~1970).

Sure, but then the climate models were created to show the dangers of man-made inputs, so of course they show that. The guys who make them are fairly smart, after all, they're not going to make a model that shows that no one should care about their field.

Of course human activity has some effect on the climate. But the climate isn't going to be stable no matter what we do - stable just isn't a normal property of the climate on any large time scale. The glaciers come and go every 100k years. I'm just as happy to not have them return this time (and they are 10k years overdue). There would be no Canada left to make fun of, can't have that!

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Dummy, there have been tens of thousands of studies, and 99.9% of them all agree. It's not a conspiracy of hundreds of thousands of scientists.

Re:Stop lying

[Junta]

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.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate change is not an "absurd fantasy", you fucking liar. It's scientific fact.

On the contrary, blockchain and climate change are the marketeer's wet dream.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

You're 100% wrong (or simply lying). They're pretty damned accurate, actually. If you have any real interest, you should look into the IPCC. Here's a high level overview: http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf...

Re:Stop lying

[chrysrobyn]

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 believe the theory of climate change is real. Nor is it hard to point out that gravity is still "a theory" but we still are pretty sure it's real.

Rise up.

Re:Stop lying

[reboot246]

Tens of thousands? Really? I've told you a billion times to never exaggerate.

Re:Stop lying

[iMadeGhostzilla]

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 reducing pollution, for the same reason -- the observable "consequences" of pollution are much stronger and according to the AGW models reducing pollution would go towards reducing man made impact on the climate anyway, however big or small it is.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Science doesn't depend on anything in particular to be true. That's how science works. We try to figure out what is true. Nobody is paying scientists to prove something or another.

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?

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

And the climate models have been wildly off since the beginning. Wasn't Manhattan supposed to be underwater by now?

Maybe if they didn't almost universally "adjust" past temperatures /down/ to make the graph look more like their computer projections, they would have a point. With flat real temps, their models are all pretty much trash.

There is an increase in global temps. Part of it IS man made. Part of it IS coming out of a mini-ice age. Part of it IS melting permafrost that is releasing methane. That melting is in some UNKNOWN portion caused by man made warming. Part of it is increasing cloud cover caused by any or all of a myriad of things including general temperature increases to increased cosmic radiation.

Notice that all of these things have some portion of them being caused by humans. The problem is that while it's absolutely ridiculous to say that humans haven't had any effect on climate, it's equally ridiculous to say that humans are the prime driver of climate. There are way too many variables and any computer models we've designed that use human interaction as a major factor force us to drastically and artificially reduce the temperatures of the past so that we can end up where we are now. In the navy, we used to call this "blazing the logs".

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

I disagree. When somebody is stating something that's clearly wrong, and that thing they're stating can and will harm people, good people have an obligation to call them out as being "wrong". I'm not going to pussyfoot around with morons saying, "climate change is fake" based on nothing. This is a real thing. It's a very real threat to humanity. I'm going to continue to call out liars as liars. I'm going to continue to call out idiots and idiots.

And by the way, "theory" the way scientists use it is very different than the way non-scientists (such as yourself) use it.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Al Gore telling us that there is a consensus that Manhattan would be under water by 2015. He sure was right. That place looks like Venice! It doesn't? Oh. Maybe this whole mess is just FUD.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Do you "remember" that in the same way the Orange Asshole "remembers" people celebrating in the streets when the WTC came down?

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

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. Wasn't long before there were massive floods.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

chrysrobyn, you are trying to be civil to a turd. The turd isn't listening.
The turd is going out of its way to be a dick.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

What would it take to make you believe that mankind is negatively affecting our climate?

Re:Stop lying

[sexconker]

I remember people celebrating in the streets when that happened. I watched news footage of people half a world away cheering and celebrating.

Re:Stop lying

[TsuruchiBrian]

AC beat me to it. What would it take to convince you that you are wrong? Is there any conceivable evidence that could do this?

Re:Stop lying

[TsuruchiBrian]

Good point. If only someone could produce an anecdote about an unnamed prominent climate denier saying something stupid, it would prove global climate change was real again.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right the Climate is changing, it changes every day.

Re:Stop lying

[Capsaicin]

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. 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 ...

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 ... are saying the same sort of thing that we're actually seeing on the ground. ...

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 ... 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 ...

So "roughly 10 years" later, how is the drought situation in Eastern Australia panning out ... this even from the Murdoch press, speaks to its seriousness.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

Which climate models would that be? Because without constant, nearly-annual re-jiggering of the models, we'd see that 95% of the models are flat-out wrong. But hey, now that output of the models is actually defined by the IPCC as constituting half the current climate (yes, models are half of the current climate - not the actual data, real-world empirical measurements - models), then models can never be wrong, can they?

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

False. About 1.6% of the climate papers that Cook et al. examined were explicit in "man causes the majority of global warming". But then, saying 1.6% of climate scientists agree doesn't sound too good, does it? So just adjust the data - er, model - and then you can claim what you like!

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientific Facts do require things to be true inorder to be valid science and scientific facts anything else is nothing but a "theory" and that is nothing but an educated guess.

Science n. [to know] 1. Systematized Knowledge derived from observation, study, etc.
{Webster's Dictionary}

You should have paid attention in school instead of skipping classes and letting others tell you what is reality.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

If models can fit the facts, then the models are effective. Climate models absolutely do fit the facts.

No they do not. If the models don't fit, then admit you're a twit, and from this debate, you must go and quit (apologies to Johnny Cochran).

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

You are wrong. 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?

Or the ERSST data that's been edited to create a rise 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.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

It actually happened. CNN aired footage of people in Palestine celebrating as well.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Former Vice President Al Gore admitted that the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was “torqued up” in order to spur governments to take political action to fight “global warming.”
https://www.onenewsnow.com/science-tech/2018/10/26/gore-un-climate-report-torqued-up-to-spur-action

So much for that report being factual.

STUDY: UN climate Models ‘inconsistent’ with real temperature
http://www.cfact.org/2018/04/26/study-un-climate-models-inconsistent-with-real-temperature/

New Scientific Findings Affirm Temperatures Were 3-4C Warmer 9000 Years Ago
http://notrickszone.com/2018/05/31/new-scientific-findings-affirm-temperatures-were-3-4c-warmer-9000-years-ago/

For the last 20 years climate scientists and campaigners have warned that atolls and low-lying islands are facing an imminent threat to their existence due to climate change and sea level rise which could soon cause the complete disappearance of entire islands. A new paper that reviews Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted.
https://www.thegwpf.com/new-study-reveals-90-of-global-atolls-are-stable-or-growing/

Re: Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried to research effect of CO2 and greenhouse gases? Tried anything to educate yourself? If you don't at least try, you're just lying!

Re:Stop lying

[lgw]

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, which isn't fast.

Re: Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

I have, and there really isn't much correlation between temperature and CO2. You need look no further than the cooling from ~1940 to ~1975, or the fact that heating from ~1900 to ~1935 matched that from ~1975 to ~2010. And that we had the medieval warm period and the little ice age that followed it. In other words, we've had big swings in temperature sans big amounts of CO2; thus, the historical data does not support CO2 as the driver of any climate change. It may have an impact, but it is a smaller one, if that.

Re:Stop lying

[TsuruchiBrian]

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 don't know how much the climate is being afftected. Ok. So what evidence would convince that we do know how much (to a reasonable level of certainty) mankind is affecting the climate?

You said we don't know the costs of doing nothing vs doing everything and we can't even approach such questions and our models are "barely predictive". Ok, so what would convince you that our models are finally predictive enough to make those kinds of assessments of cost?

You said no answer is worth granting totalitarian power to any government. Ok. I don't think anyone wants that, but whatever. This is irrelevant to my question of what it would take to convince you you were wrong even if you still think we should do nothing about it.

You said science is slow. Ok fine. So pretend science got much faster. What evidence hypothetical evidence obtained hypothetically fast would convince you that you were wrong?

Do you know what convincing (to you) evidence looks like? Would you recognize it if you saw it? Would you know why it was convincing to you? Or would it need to just feel convincing?

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you but Australia is mostly desert. I'm only 44 years old but I can tell you right now that farmers have been complaining about droughts and floods continuously for as long as I've been alive.
There's nothing more Australian than building a farm in the Australian outback and then complaining that it doesn't rain very often, but when it does it goddamn floods.

Re:Stop lying

[h33t l4x0r]

Just not in NYC. Meanwhile Orange Julius Caesar was bragging that he had the tallest building now.

Re:Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Scientific facts are evidence in the form of experiments and/or observations.

From this evidence, scientists form theories and laws. These are meant to summarize, generalize, and abstract what the experiments and observations show. From this, the practice of science can build tools to understand the universe.

Your dismissal of something that is a "nothing but a theory" is a common misrepresentation that non-scientists make of what scientists consider to be a theory -- something that is not merely a hunch, but a conceptual model that is supported by evidence.

Just one example: it is arguable that the atomic theory of the universe has yielded the most powerful developments in the technological aspects of society. Would you dismiss that as "nothing but a theory?"

Re:Stop lying

[ChrisMaple]

Nobody is paying scientists to prove something or another.

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?

Re: Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting question. What would it take to convince -you- that AGW is a scam?

Re: Stop lying

[Anonymous Coward]

When AGW priests use the scientific method they can refer to their cult as science.

Re: Stop lying

[DethLok]

https://www.britannica.com/sci...

Umm, it's not established that the medieval warm period (MWP) was global, and it seems quite likely that it was restricted to parts of the northern hemisphere.

Though this article does mention that anthropomorphic climate change deniers quite like the idea of the MWP, I leave it to the reader to decipher why.

Re:Stop lying

[Capsaicin]

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 does the fact that your experience of Australian climatic conditions is less than mine establish 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)?" [HINT: It doesn't.]

I can tell you right now that farmers have been complaining about droughts and floods continuously for as long as I've been alive.

Well no shit mate. That's not really surprising if, as is claimed, S.E. Australia were experiencing a continuous ratcheting up in frequency and severity of drought conditions. But guess what? That's still not relevant to 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)!"

There's nothing more Australian than ...

FFS sunshine, can you bottle it already? The issue here is that trying to pin that outrageous claim on Flannery is complete bullshit, and you know it. Nor is all your irrelevant blathering going to make it anything other than bullshit . End of story!

Re:Stop lying

[lgw]

Ok so what evidence would convince you that you were wrong to your own subjective measure of what counts as "negatively"?

Evidence that mankind was making things colder would be very negative, in my opinion. I'm cool (ahem) with the end of the current ice age. The return of glaciation, not so much. Canada and parts of the northern US under a mile of ice would be pretty bad.

So what evidence would convince that we do know how much (to a reasonable level of certainty) mankind is affecting the climate?

Far better models than we have today. There are so many models that pretty much anything that could happen is going to be predicted by one of them, so that doesn't mean much. One specific model would need to be consistently predicting climate changes to good accuracy for a couple decades.

Of course, I don't believe that's possible, because I think the sun is the major driving force in climate change. So, a good predictive model of solar activity which says "nope, not the sun" would do it too. Sadly, that's an even harder task than Earth climate modeling.

You said no answer is worth granting totalitarian power to any government. Ok. I don't think anyone wants that, but whatever.

Every politician in the world wants more power. That's all they ever want. That's the only reason there's any government involvement with climate change in the first place.

Re: Stop lying

[DogDude]

That doesn't make any sense, AC. Troll harder.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Hmm... should I believe some random person's crazy conspiracy theories, or the work of tens of thousands of scientists.... hmmm.... that's a tough one.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Well, there you go. One crazy guy's view (who thinks that evolution is fake) invalidates the work of tens of thousands of scientists. I'm convinced.

Re: Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

Africa and Arabia were warm, as was China. That suggests it spanned around at least the Northern hemisphere completely - and ALL the current climate models assume that North and South are somewhat linked, so what would be the mechanism to say it didn't happen globally?

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

That "crazy dude", Dr. Roy Spencer, is a meteorologist and leads NASA's science team for climate satellites. Yeah, just a crazy guy, he's no scientist... He just collects data and uses that to determine what happens, and he doesn't toss out inconvenient data. Unlike Mann, Hansen, and most of the rest you apparently worship who believe data from a single tree on a Russian peninsula is enough to determine the complete climate record of the world.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Scientists can be crazy people, too.

"I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world. [...] Science has startled us with its many discoveries and advances, but it has hit a brick wall in its attempt to rid itself of the need for a creator and designer."

He's a fucking nut.
But yeah, go ahead and buy into what one Jesus/Limbaugh guy says, as opposed to the tens of thousands of other scientists. That seems like a really great idea. Best of luck with that.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

Do you realize those models that you have such fervent faith in, predict warming from 0.01 deg C/decade to 0.082 deg C/decade, a factor of 8? And not a single model can tell us how much of that warming is natural, and how much is man-made? And you say the guy who's personal faith is in a divine being - but who uses 100% data for any scientific claims he makes - is the nutter?

Re:Stop lying

[TsuruchiBrian]

Far better models than we have today. There are so many models that pretty much anything that could happen is going to be predicted by one of them, so that doesn't mean much.

That's kind of the point of creating all these models. For every model, there is a person(s) who thought it would be a good predictor, and we will find out in time if they are right. I agree we need good models to have confidence about what is going to happen in the future, but I don't think we need models (although they can help) to determine if/how much human caused global climate change has already happened.

Of course, I don't believe that's possible, because I think the sun is the major driving force in climate change. So, a good predictive model of solar activity which says "nope, not the sun" would do it too.

Why do you think the sun is the major driving force? Is that based on any evidence? Why do you need a predictive model to be convinced that the sun is not the major driving force? How about just a bunch of historical data showing no correlation between solar output and global temperature?

Sadly, that's an even harder task than Earth climate modeling.

It's pretty easy if you find no significant long term correlation and predict that global temperature is basically unaffected by the sorts of variation in solar activity we've already seen. We can decide we need a model if all of a sudden global temperature becomes very sensitive to solar activity, or if solar activity becomes more erratic, but is that really necessary at this point?

Every politician in the world wants more power. That's all they ever want. That's the only reason there's any government involvement with climate change in the first place.

That seems like a pretty convoluted way to get power. I agree that politicians want more power. I don't think that's a good reason not to try to identify and solve problems. Surely it's good to know if problems exist and what could be done to solve them, even if we don't want to grant totalitarian authority to a government to fix it.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

You don't know what you're talking about. I don't have the time to explain it all to you.

More importantly, do you really believe that tens of thousands of scientists have come together, collectively, to create the largest conspiracy in the history of the world (for no apparent reason), and only a few of these random nuts on the Net know the *truth*? That's insane in and of itself.

Use your brain.

Re:Stop lying

[Junta]

Sounds like a reasonable reaction (don't fixate on Carbon emissions and end up ignoring pollution), but that's not what I generally see for rejecting AGW for policy decisions. The 'AGW might not be the case' crowd generally advocates for 'burn that coal!'

I don't see a lot of scenarios where someone is neglecting or being reckless about pollutants in their pursuit of carbon-reduction, the incliniations seem to be pretty well correlated.

The exceptions would be advocating for unregulated production of battery and solar equipment, which *could* drive pollution problems, but I do not think people are advocating for policies explicitly endorsing allowing pollution for the sake of reducing carbon.

Re:Stop lying

[lgw]

That's kind of the point of creating all these models. For every model, there is a person(s) who thought it would be a good predictor, and we will find out in time if they are right.

You do understand how statistics work against models, right? You have to quantify the statistical confidence that the model wasn't right by accident. If you have 10,000 models, then a 5-sigma event for any one model might only be a 2-sigma event for the universe of models (in reality it's better, because the models largely copy one another, but if they were all disjoint it would be very difficult to prove anything).

Why do you think the sun is the major driving force?

Well, the sun is the source of effectively all the Earth's heat. Are you familiar with the history of climate change beyond the past few centuries? We get a glaciation cycle every 100k years in the current ice age. The best theory is that's a solar activity cycle (it's a very regular cycle, too regular to be a feedback mechanism in the Earth's climate). We've been in an ice age since the big dinosaurs died off - that's also thought to be a longer-term solar activity cycle. The glaciers should have returned 10k years ago like clockwork, but they didn't. Why not? Probably something to do with solar activity, possibly the Quaternary Ice Age ended 10k years ago and we've been shifting to a Warm Earth.

There are also some papers claiming that more fine grained and recent temperature changes are also explained by solar activity, but those solar models have even less track record than climate models, so meh. Merely creating a model that explains historical activity doesn't count for much.

Surely it's good to know if problems exist and what could be done to solve them, even if we don't want to grant totalitarian authority to a government to fix it.

The best thing is for solar power to become so cheap that no one wanted to use anything else. That's happening anyway. As soon as someone starts wanting to coerce my behavior to solve what they see as a problem, I'm not interested.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

You've yet to post any data; I have. And somehow I don't know what I'm talking about and need to be explained to. AND, I am to take the word of tens of thousands of scientists - whose own models do not agree with data - and believe them. You need to check out what Einstein said about the 100 scientists who thought he was wrong: it would only take one, to show data contrary to Einstein's position, to prove the issue.

Re:Stop lying

[TsuruchiBrian]

You do understand how statistics work against models, right? You have to quantify the statistical confidence that the model wasn't right by accident. If you have 10,000 models, then a 5-sigma event for any one model might only be a 2-sigma event for the universe of models (in reality it's better, because the models largely copy one another, but if they were all disjoint it would be very difficult to prove anything).

I understand you're point about having more models increases your chances that any individual one will fit the data by chance, but having more models also increases the chances of any individual one being correct or being very close to being correct. Having less models in general is not better. If you have some way of filtering out bad models beforehand (e.g. models with bad methodology), then obviously we should do that. But in general having more models is a good thing. Even if none of them are correct, the patterns of which turn out to be correct and which do not will be more dense and possibly lead us to figuring out which features of these models are good and which are not, and may lead to new insights in better ways to interpret the data.

Well, the sun is the source of effectively all the Earth's heat.

Not *all* but sure, it is the source of most of the earth's surface temperature. Maybe I should have been more specific with my question. I was not asking if you had evidence that the sun was the major source of heat, but rather if you had any evidence that the sun was the major driving force in the rate of change in temperature.

Well, the sun is the source of effectively all the Earth's heat. Are you familiar with the history of climate change beyond the past few centuries? We get a glaciation cycle every 100k years in the current ice age. The best theory is that's a solar activity cycle (it's a very regular cycle, too regular to be a feedback mechanism in the Earth's climate). We've been in an ice age since the big dinosaurs died off - that's also thought to be a longer-term solar activity cycle. The glaciers should have returned 10k years ago like clockwork, but they didn't. Why not? Probably something to do with solar activity, possibly the Quaternary Ice Age ended 10k years ago and we've been shifting to a Warm Earth.

According to most scientists, the big swings in climate in the past (e.g. on the scale of ice gaes) happened very slowly, and we are seeing a much more rapid rate of change coinciding with the industrial revolution. I don't think they are as concerned with the temperature as the rate of change, because this doesn't give as much time for ecosystems to adapt, etc.

There are also some papers claiming that more fine grained and recent temperature changes are also explained by solar activity, but those solar models have even less track record than climate models, so meh. Merely creating a model that explains historical activity doesn't count for much.

I would ask you for a citation these papers, but you don't seem to be endorsing them, so I don't think I care enough to ask.

The best thing is for solar power to become so cheap that no one wanted to use anything else. That's happening anyway. As soon as someone starts wanting to coerce my behavior to solve what they see as a problem, I'm not interested.

My question was not about advocating any particular solution. My question was about falsification.

You say that what would convince you that you are wrong is better models that have accurate predictions for decades. That would certainly convince me. But I would find evidence short of that to also be convincing. Maybe I would not be 100% convinced, but I could at least be convinced to the level of being more likely than not.

But you also seem already convinced that solar activity is the cause. I have seen a bunch of data showing the opposite, but even according to you, there is

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

First off, the IPCC models are quite sound. I have no data to post because I haven't done any experiments. I've read other peoples' experiments, but I haven't read all ~20-30k and neither have you. That's why the IPCC exists.

Einstein's theory, or any other valid scientific theory, is not going to be disproven by a crackpot with a website and too much time on his hands. They can be disproven by carefully thought out, peer-reviewed experiments. And considering something with as many variables as climate change, there will not be one experiment that can prove or disprove anything. That's not science. Anybody who claims to have "one fact" that will disprove a system as complicated as the entire Earth's climate, is fucking crazy and fucking wrong. That's simply not possible.

So no, it's not worth my time to discuss one crackpot's idea that supposedly disproves tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies. I don't know enough about the entire Earth's climate system to even begin. Neither do you. Neither does whoever you're saying is this brilliant mastermind. It's not simple enough for a single person to understand the billions and billions and billions pieces of data in all of the tens of thousands of experiments. That's why the IPCC consists of many, many scientists working together. It's a massive, massive system that requires massive amounts of data and thought to understand. The idea that "oh, here, you missed a sign" is somehow going to discredit all of that work is insane. It doesn't even make any sense.

If you want to somehow believe that you know better than tens of thousands of scientists because you read a blog and watched a youtube video, best of luck to you.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

First off, the IPCC models are quite sound. I have no data to post because I haven't done any experiments. I've read other peoples' experiments, but I haven't read all ~20-30k and neither have you. That's why the IPCC exists.

Which model? Because they scatter all over the place, from 0.1 deg C/century to 0.8 deg C/century. And the actual data is well down near the 0.1 deg C/century models. Furthermore, not a single IPCC model has any inclusion or calculation of the amount of global temperature change that is natural; they ALL assume that 100% of all change is man-made, and yet we know that is NOT the case. So if we're down around 0.1 deg C/century, and natural climate change is at that same level - how much is from man?

The reality is that the IPCC doesn't know how much warming is natural, and its own models do not reflect or support the extremist claims made, NOR do they match the actual data. Furthermore, the IPCC even has fudged the definition of today's climate! The IPCC now considers today's climate to be:

Present level of global warming is defined as the average of a 30-year period centered on 2017 assuming the recent rate of warming continues.

Do you see that? They have now redefined today's climate to include their own future projections at a measure equal to past data. Future model results are considered as reliable and important as actual data - even though I have shown you that the models are all over the place and do NOT match past data. But somehow they are "good enough" to use to determine today's climate as well as the future climate - data be damned!

If you choose to ignore the actual facts, and you refuse to think critically, then there's nothing to be said. You really are going on simple faith at that point - not science. Science requires skepticism, science requires logic and reason, and right now - the IPCC is showing none of that, and your blind acceptance of their statements shows the same. Faith, not science.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Climate is the measure of average weather over a period of about 30 years. That's the scientific definition of the term.

There are many models because it's a very complicated system. Very very complicated. Different models are used to measure different things, and they do so in different ways. The models are then averaged together, and they *do* accurately fit past climate patterns, which means they're likely to fit future ones as well.

The charts that you're linking to are irrelevant. The first one is from some conspiracy theorist. The second I don't even understand, or know where it's from. What does "structural uncertainty in mid-troposphere satellite temperatures" mean? What does it prove?

You should consider taking a class or several science classes to understand the scientific process, and how to think critically. You're so far away from understanding actual science that I don't even know where to tell you to start. Maybe start with your *accredited* local community college and take some basic "what is science" classes.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

Climate is the measure of average weather over a period of about 30 years. That's the scientific definition of the term.

Not per the new IPCC report; climate is now the measure of the average of the last 15 years and the predicted average of the upcoming 15 years, meaning climate is now what the models say it is. Does that sound right to you? Remember - I linked to that inside the IPCC's report itself.!

There are many models because it's a very complicated system. Very very complicated. Different models are used to measure different things, and they do so in different ways. The models are then averaged together, and they *do* accurately fit past climate patterns, which means they're likely to fit future ones as well.

Check those graphs I linked to again. The "average" of those ~100 models is much hotter than the actual data. They only fit past climate, because they are tuned to do so. But when you run them forward (like, take the latest tuned model, and input data from 1980) they do not fit "future" data. The models drift away. That's the crux of the matter. The ONLY way the models "fit" anything is by making them fit ALL the past data. Building a model on the past data, and then letting it start running with a fixed set of actual data from, say, 40 years ago, and you end up with a result much hotter than current conditions. The models can only hind-cast, they cannot forecast!

The charts that you're linking to are irrelevant. The first one is from some conspiracy theorist. The second I don't even understand, or know where it's from. What does "structural uncertainty in mid-troposphere satellite temperatures" mean? What does it prove?

The charts are actual data plotted on model results. If you cannot take a few minutes to learn at least that, then why are you even arguing about climate? Just throw up your hands, admit your ignorance and willful desire to remain ignorant, and state "I choose to trust the IPCC regardless of what the data actually states". Because - as I linked in this very post - the IPCC now considers future model results as important to defining the climate today as the past actual, empirical data.

You should consider taking a class or several science classes to understand the scientific process, and how to think critically. You're so far away from understanding actual science that I don't even know where to tell you to start. Maybe start with your *accredited* local community college and take some basic "what is science" classes.

It might surprise you to know that not only am I a published author, but I have taught post-grad level courses in acoustics and marine and fisheries research. I defined quite a bit of the standards in fisheries sciences used by the US, Canada, and most of the EU. I have a BSEE, MS Physics, and Ph.D. in Technology Engineering. All from accredited schools. After my SONAR and ultrasound career, I've moved into consumer electronics and audio and currently work on technology roadmapping and R&D for a top audio corporation. Most test gear manufacturers in the audio world know who I am, and I consult with many of them on products - meaning I help define how things are measured, not just what things are built.

And it is precisely because of my strong scientific background in research, development, and theory that I am VERY skeptical of the data. Unlike you, I actually go out and learn things instead of throwing up my hands and saying "I don't understand what structural uncertainty means!" Try an education yourself - you might actually open up your mind.

Re:Stop lying

[lgw]

Not *all* but sure, it is the source of most of the earth's surface temperature

That's what "effectively all" means. 2999 parts out of 3000 is "effectively all".

t feels to me like you have a double standard when it comes to which poorly modeled theories you are willing to believe.

Well, yeah, When there's no good data, believe what makes you happy. Best rule for life.

You said you think this whole thing might be perpetuated by totalitarian regimes seeking power

That's a little broad. Politicians seeking power will latch on to anything that gives them an excuse to control more. Few politicians are smart enough to invent something like "climate change" in the first place, which is why conspiracy theories are so bad: they posit brilliant politicians, against all evidence. But they can certainly realize "Hey, if this is true, I can control more day-to-day activities of people, maybe even require them to buy that product that my deadbeat brother-in-law makes. Let's have more of this!"

But is there any use in being an equally biased counterbalance?

Yes. Reject any idea that would make people reduce their standard of living until it's certain that it's both necessary, and the solution that causes the minimum possible reduction. Basic morality, if you ask me.

I thought it made intuitive sense that the sun was the driver of climate change. I've seen a lot of data that suggests otherwise

Beyond the scale of a few thousand years, it almost certainly is. And on a longer scale still, the Earth has feedback mechanisms that will keep liquid water on the surface in the face of pretty wide changes in solar influx. No one is sure about what feedback mechanisms operate on scales less than millions of years, which is after all what climate models are trying to figure out.

For real fun, read about how incredibly odd Venus is, with almost no rotation and no geologically-old surface features. None of it makes sense. The climate guys have it easy, relatively speaking.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

I'm sad that somebody who supposedly has as much education as you is getting sucked into garbage fake science online, while ignoring the science of tens of thousands of real scientists. That's a real shame. Your education could be put to good use doing something good, instead of repeating conspiracy theories and fake science on the Net. Your perfunctory "analysis" of one of the most complex systems that we know is based on cherry-picked data that isn't even relevant (or real), and your choice to completely ignore peer-review is bizarre.

Yes, I choose to throw up my hands instead of trying to argue with you, just like I don't try to argue with a madman ranting on a street corner.

I don't know what has happened to you that has warped your mind so badly, but I wish you all the best.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

The number of scientists doesn't matter; the quality if the science does. That's the point - the quality is extremely poor, even to the point of saying the current climate is literally defined by the projected next 15 years of weather that has not yet happened. That is NOT science - that is faith. That you cannot understand this simple point, or choose to ignore it, speaks volumes.

As Albert Einstein famously said when there were 100 scientists who wrote a book about why he was wrong:

Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.

The quantity of scientists doesn't matter; the quality of their science does. And that is severely lacking, and anyone with an education could understand that if they just looked at the data objectively.

Re:Stop lying

[iMadeGhostzilla]

It's worse than that: framing environmental efforts in the context of climate change takes away its teeth. If you say we must reduce coal mining coal because of our sophisticated climate models, people will say pfft that is made up stuff. But if you say reduce coal mining because of the pollution, it's much harder to dismiss that because pollution is visible and everybody knows what it's like to breathe poor quality air. (Assuming coal mining creates pollution.)

In part the anti environmental tide that's going on is made possible by years of (smug and arrogant, if you ask me) insistence on climate change.

Re:Stop lying

[DogDude]

Two words: Peer. Review. If you're really a phD, you should know that there is no science without peer review. The IPCC reports are heavily peer reviewed. The crackpot stuff you're referencing is not peer reviewed at all.

One person looking at one graph, out of context, among tens of thousands of others is not peer review. That's just somebody's uninformed opinion.

Re:Stop lying

[TsuruchiBrian]

But is there any use in being an equally biased counterbalance?

Yes. Reject any idea that would make people reduce their standard of living until it's certain that it's both necessary, and the solution that causes the minimum possible reduction. Basic morality, if you ask me.

My question was not about actions that should be taken, but rather one of belief. If you think a bunch of people are wrong in their belief, does it provide any utility to believe the opposite rather than just ignoring them and coming to your own conclusion.

Beyond the scale of a few thousand years, it almost certainly is.

It is apparently one of many causes for slow rate climate change on the scale of ice ages, but I don't see that as being an adequate explanation for the dramatic change in rate we are seeing now.

Consider the following statements

I'm a libertarian so I don't think we should do solution X to global climate change

I'm a libertarian so I don't believe theory Y describing the cause of global climate change is true

I'm a libertarian so I don't believe theory Z believed by liberals and statists

The first one seems reasonable to me, but the others do not, regardless of what X, Y and Z are. One is a value proposition, the others imply that truth is dependent upon belief.

Re:Stop lying

[LynnwoodRooster]

LOL - peer review? Really? You really have no clue how that works, do you? It's pretty much worthless; even journals say its flawed and when you have hundreds of "peer reviewed" papers yanked because of fraud, and even fake papers being published even though they are "peer reviewed", you really are out there on faith. Let me ask you - would you expect a paper to be peer reviewed and published even if the data was not provided - just the summary? Because that's happened plenty in the whole AGW debate - hundreds of papers published with ZERO data provided, just summaries and conclusions.

If you put your trust in peer review without data, then you might as well put your faith in the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man coming down to give you a rainbow-farting unicorn!

Re: Stop lying

[DethLok]

No idea! I'm not a climatologist, just that I've read - more than once - that the MWP was not global. I don't know that it's true, but I don't know that it's not, either.

I believe, though, that the hole in the ozone layer is predominatly over the south pole, not the north, so there is some ... evidence? ... that the extreme north and south atmospheric composition differs?

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[amicusNYCL]

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.

What a joke!

[p51d007]

Man is going to destroy the planet by the end of the 1990's. Cow farts could cause the Earth to reach the tipping point by 2010 And on and on....now bitcoin mining will cause sea level to rise. PANIC! Not!!

Re:What a joke!

[DogDude]

We've probably already reached the tipping point, stupid.

Re:What a joke!

[Kaenneth]

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.

Re:What a joke!

[DogDude]

It's nowhere near that simple.

Re:What a joke!

[iggymanz]

you are the one being stupid, making alarmists statements with "probably" and not a shred of proof.

c6gunner & other impersonators of me... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & quote JOB in "Lawnmower man" - "You realize Dr. Angelo that my intelligence has surpassed yours & I can't allow your fear of what you don't understand to get in the way of this work"

* ESPECIALLY c6gunner whose name's on this post as submitter yet signed "APK" https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

"classic Windows hosts trick to block the Coinhive or Crypto-Loot domains" - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/a-new-player-joins-coinhive-on-the-browser-cryptojacking-scene/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-a-hosts-file-to-improve-your-internet-experience/ "Hosts files really shine by letting you block ads, spyware sites, malware sites, & tracking sites"

APK

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You're lying

[DogDude]

You're simply lying about climate change. It's 100% real and man made. The climate models that predict the change only work when man-made interference is included. You have no idea what you're talking about. There have been hundreds of thousands of studies that have been included just in the IPCC's reviews, so far. I have no idea what one study you're talking about, and I'm sure you don't, either.

Re:You're lying

[medv4380]

I'm telling the truth. The study in question is titled, "Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Tree Ring Temperature Reconstruction." You can listen to Mann's roundabout way to justify the cherry picking here: In His Own Words. You can download the tree ring data from NOAA here: Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Tree Ring Temperature Reconstruction. It even comes with the divergent temperature calculated for you. I can even show you how to process the temperature data from the GHCN Daily here: GHCN. It's really rather easy, and if you bothered to figure out the temperature for the US yourself you'd be just as confused as to why Mann's red line is so far off. You can stick your head in the sand, and call me a lier, but it won't change the facts.

Re:You're lying

[DogDude]

I don't go to Youtube for science, thanks. I'm not qualified to analyze raw data from somebody else's experiment, and neither are you, clearly. Since you don't know how to cite a study, and the title you're referring to doesn't exist, I can only assume that you're referring to this study, which has a similar title: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

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 no reference of man-made effects on climate change), this is one study of tens of thousands reviewed by the IPCC. There is no one study that can prove or disprove such a massive system as the Earth's climate. "Gotcha!" isn't how science works. You're describing the Jerry Springer show, maybe.

If you don't know what you're talking about, it's best to just stop commenting so that you don't make yourself look more stupid than you already do.

Re:You're lying

[medv4380]

The video is an interview of Michael Mann, and is his defense of the subject we're talking about. You have your free speech to use an Ad Hominem argument, but that doesn't make it right. The interview serves as a way of Mann speaking for himself, and me not putting words in his mouth. Of course, Mann isn't on that study, because the criticism is why are they cherry picking that data out of their conclusions. You can go after credentials and commit expert seeking fallacies rather than actually debate. It wont change the fact that, as the study cites

No current tree ring (TR) based reconstruction of extratropical Northern Hemisphere (ENH) temperatures that extends into the 1990s captures the full range of late 20th century warming observed in the instrumental record. Over recent decades, a divergence between cooler reconstructed and warmer instrumental large-scale temperatures is observed.

This isn't one study. Rather it is a large collection of studies. All pointing to a contradiction between the Temperature they calculated for North America, and Tree Ring reconstructions. Their Hypothesis is to try to justify dismissing the contradiction entirely. My Theory is that the Tree reconstruction is mostly correct barring drought conditions, and that they processed the Temperature incorrectly. I can process the temperature more or less correctly, and get good agreement with the data. I can even process the rain data and explain a few minor divergences using droughts. Namely this one: Texas Drought

Re:You're lying

[DogDude]

Youtube videos are for music videos and conspiracy theorists. I'm not wasting my time commenting on garbage. Point to a study or collection of studies that you can discuss like an intelligent person, or fuck off. You're just one random non-scientist playing scientist with some crackpot theories, youtube videos, and wikipedia articles. I assume you think you're also a medical doctor because you can clip your own toenails, right? Are you a musician because you have a car radio, too?

Re:You're lying

[Kaenneth]

> 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

[medv4380]

You're commenting an awful lot and calling a video that represents your side a "conspiracy" is admittedly strange. I've pointed you at the data to discuss intelligently in spite of you doing more harm to your side with your behavior. Imagine someone thinking your routine isn't doing actual damage to your argument. You're funny, but your self-destructive attitude does you no favors.

Re:You're lying

[DogDude]

You have linked to a youtube video, Wikipedia, and have referenced a scientific article that doesn't exist. You've presented nothing worthy of arguing intelligently about. If you have something of any scientific merit to discuss, I haven't seen it yet. I'll again suggest that you start here: http://ipcc.ch/ and read some of the tens of thousands of real scientific studies.

Or just stick to youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:You're lying

[medv4380]

I've linked to two datasets from NOAA, and you've admitted to being too incompetent to read them or talk about the data. This particular subject is even in the IPCC reports that have come out under Divergences. Also known as justifications for cherry picking the evidence. A more capable person would have focused the argument. Instead, you've focused on a straw man ad hominem argument calling Michael Mann a conspiracy theorist because he did an interview posted on youtube and became committed to historical denialism over one of the more epic droughts in US history because it's easy to point to Wikipedia. If this were a formal debate that would be frowned upon, but your behavior would have cost you the debate long before that. Hard to imagine anyone seeing your argument not damaging everything about your side. Unfortunate, I can't imagine you arguing better.

Re:You're lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing sucks more than developers who think they know math because they can sling some code.

I will be glad when AI replaces you all.

Developers SUCK.

Re:You're lying

[Anonymous Coward]

medv... DogDude doesn't even know who Mann is.

Re:You're lying

[Andtalath]

http://www.collegehumor.com/vi...
Guess who you are in that video?

Re:You're lying

[jwhyche]

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.

Re:You're lying

[DogDude]

Ok, dude. Take your youtube.wikipedia data analysis and show the IPCC, which consists of tens of thousands of studies from hundreds of thousands of scientists over decades, and tell them you figured it all out. Go right ahead. You're fucking Einstein.

Re:You're lying

[thegarbz]

Of course having Al Gore on the climate change band wagon didn't help.

Really? Because by all accounts it seems to have put the entire situation in the spotlight which seems pretty damn important if you're going to change the behviour and opinion of the human race.

Re:You're lying

[medv4380]

The data analysis has nothing to do with YouTube or Wikipedia. You can continue with that Strawman if you want to. If you think about it, maybe I'm using you as a foil to convince the more reasonable people to look at the data and actual arguments. You haven't done yourself any favors by attempting to miss represent what's been said, and your lack of knowledge on the subject is glaring. A reasonable person would conclude you're a troll or a very poor defender of your cause. It's sad you won't rise to a better argument.

Re:You're lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Implying the models are right...

Re:You're lying

[DogDude]

I'm taking a class that looks at climate change now, with lots of time spent on the IPCC reports. I do know what I'm talking about. I don't need to take time to explain why every crazy person is crazy. There's massive consensus with tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies. If that's not enough for you, then you either don't understand science, which is not something that can be taught on a message board, or you are maliciously trying to spread lies.

Re:You're lying

[medv4380]

Consensus is an ad populum argument. It's not science, but rather a poor form of debate that works on mobs too well. It will be interesting when you get the Divergence Problem, which is a whole section of the report, if you get that far. Likely, you're going to respond to that section much the same way you are now. You'll justify your cherry picking around the problem, and suffer a fit of cognitive dissonance rather than accept the actual data. After all, those tree rings must be lying even after keeping pace with temperature for hundreds of years before the problem. Because there's no way a change in instruments that was over adjusted could be the actual cause of the NA divergence problem. That would mean your emotional investment was for not, and we just can't have that, can we?

Re:You're lying

[jwhyche]

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.

Re:You're lying

[thegarbz]

He flies to climate conferences in private jets and rumor has it his house consumes as much electricity as a small town.

I'm sure that is all true. But it takes a certain kind of mentality to discredit a global problem due to the actions of a single person.

Re:You're lying

[jwhyche]

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 .....

Re:You're lying

[thegarbz]

Read that again while thinking of certain members of congress and a willy wonka escapee ....

Still holds true. Nothing Trump says due to the nature of being the babbling buffoon who happens to be president actually changes the way the world works. There are people who will look up what he says independently, and there are people who will take his word for it because he's president and people who will flat out assume he's wrong because he's Trump.

While the latter camp will be right most of the time given his history it doesn't change the fact that it takes a certain kind of mentality to blindly follow an appeal to authority.

True

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is its locked in already.

This is not how Bitcoin mining works

[Anonymous Coward]

This shows a misunderstanding of the facts regarding how cryptocurrency mining works. More users of Bitcoin does not require a corresponding increase in the amount of Bitcoin mining hashpower.

Bitcoins mine liberal tears!

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about win-win! Mining bitcoins gives you wealth and liberal tears! Don't choose to be poor, mine bitcoins! #MAGA

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

Any other thoughts?

The issue isn't the technical details around the specific currency, it is the energy usage.

Energy cost doesn't factor in the cost of cleaning up the mess it causes, this allows people to profit from wasting it on cryptocurrencies.
They get the profit and we all have to share the resulting environmental impact.

Any attempt to regulate cryptcurrencies will only mean that people will find another way to abuse that the system is set up so that the negative side is shared.
Taxing energy isn't a good solution either since it hits less damaging energy sources as much as more damaging energy sources.

A fair system would be that those emitting greenhouse gasses should be tasked with collecting them from the atmosphere, but I don't see how that would be possible.
You can't just require that every ICE should have a collection tank for the emissions.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to be a an early investor in your Twitcoin, please how do I buy?!

CO2

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one support this development. More CO2 == more plant food!

Better than that, AI is doomed

[SuperKendall]

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.

That makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation implies an increase in prices. That's NEVER good for society at large. Ever.

Deflation implies a decrease in prices. That can be good or bad: It's good when it results from an increase in productivity (it becomes cheaper to make something), but it's bad when it results from improper investment (too much of something was being made).

So, there you have it. Seek higher productivity, which can be measured with deflation.

Re:That makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Deflation is never good because it makes *everything* a bad investment compared to hoarding cash. If the price of everything goes down, why buy? And if no one buys anything, the economy stops.

Inflation, on the other hand, disincentivizes cash-hoarding and encourages investment (since your money will eventually go away on its own if you don't spend it), which is good. Too much of it is bad, for the same reason as deflation basically, because then having cash is *never* good and no one will ever sell anything, so the economy stops.

The difference here is that cash is not an investment: liquidity has real advantages, giving cash value beyond hoarding. As such, it's worth (briefly) holding cash in a mildly inflationary regime despite the fact that its value is falling. Conversely, aside from buying food, the instant things are even marginally deflationary, hoarding is the right answer: you get liquidity *and* a better investment.

Just imagine ...

[surfcow]

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.

Re:Just imagine ...

[religionofpeas]

If Bitcoin doesn't generate value, then the mining should stop shortly, and the problem will solve itself long before 2033.

Re:Just imagine ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Bitcoin doesn't generate value, then the mining should stop shortly, and the problem will solve itself long before 2033.

It was a libertarian wet dream kept alive by pedophiles and drug dealers before being jumped on by stock market gamblers looking to make a quick buck.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[dasunt]

A fair system would be that those emitting greenhouse gasses should be tasked with collecting them from the atmosphere, but I don't see how that would be possible. You can't just require that every ICE should have a collection tank for the emissions.

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 would be forced to buy 20 lbs of CO2 recapture for that gallon. Then they'd pass the cost on to whoever buys that one gallon of gasoline.

We're fucked... just face it already

[mark-t]

What is the point of these stories, exactly? Beyond caterint to those who perpetuate in the sort of delusion that the environmental goals that need to be reached by certain dates to avoid catastrophe have even the smallest realistic chance of being reached? The planet is fubarred already... even if there were something we could do, it wouldn't matter because not enough people *will* actually do it to stop it.

Re:We're fucked... just face it already

[Powercntrl]

The planet is fubarred already...

The planet will be just fine. Unless we manage to nuke ourselves out of existence during wars for resources, humanity will survive too. What it really comes down to is whether we should be leaving future generations with a shittier planet to live on.

Re:We're fucked... just face it already

[Anonymous Coward]

We've already passed many such "point of no return" dates anyway; every time this happens a new one is announced that is conveniently just a little further into the future. This suggests that the people responsible for setting these dates either don't know what they're talking about, or lie freely for political purposes.

Re:We're fucked... just face it already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, there are frequently stories how certain countries' economies will crash as temperatures rise. Well, if oil usage is drastically cut, then a bunch of countries' economies will still crash. A bunch of them are effectively banana republics (oil kingdoms/dictatorships). When that money disappears, they're going down the drain.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[sexconker]

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.

Let's ban electronic currency altogether!

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one would welcome a bank free cash only society ;) ... Sigh what is it with the banksters and their politician pets are they afraid of loosing control of the monetary system... Boo hoo. And no temperatures will only rise if morons still keep oil and coal plants for energy production instead of weaning themselves off the Fossils

Yes, tens of thousands of studies

[DogDude]

Yes. Tens of thousands. The most recent one, alone, looked at 9200 different studies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fifth_Assessment_Report).

That also makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your parent already used straightforward logic to explain why you're wrong; those simple statements still stand.

Let's now use your own words against you: Why would you ever buy food today when the price of food will be lower next week?

Do you see how stupid that is?

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[dAzED1]

There's solutions in search of a problem, and then there's solutions which cause big problems, and didn't solve any original problem. How about we just use gov backed currencies - they're rate limited, and the production of them isn't resource intensive in the slightest.

Keep pushing the BS headlines

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep 'em comin' boys! They'll believe it eventually, trust me!

But food is MAGICAL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you ever buy a computer today when the price of the same computer will be cheaper next year? Just use an abicus until then, amirite?

Obvious Solution

[SuperKendall]

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 the old holes will refill and you can cycle indefinitely. The fresh water produced can be shipped to developing countries or anywhere with water issues.

Re:Obvious Solution

[iggymanz]

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

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[dAzED1]

that is pants-on-head stupid. So, no LEDs, no energy efficient stuff, toss out any concern for insulating a house or business, etc? Really? Just leave all lights on all the time, keep your empty office building at the perfect temp even at night or on holidays, etc...seriously?

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[amicusNYCL]

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.

That's nothing. The oceans should be boiling now!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 1980s when the biggest hard drive was 10 MB and was huge and sucked a lot of power, somebody did a calculation and determined that the oceans would boil if we ever had a bunch of exabytes stored on them. Guess what, we generate several exabytes of data every year now and you still can't go swimming at the beach in Oregon except on the hottest days.

that's why I didn't own any bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

EOS use proof of stake, which is much better than proof of work.

Re:TF kind of story is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Did you want it medium rare instead?

FTFY

[HINT: once you explain a quip it ceases to be funny. And it's OK if the slow folk don't get it ...]

This is misleading propaganda nothing more

[Anonymous Coward]

This neglects the costs of our traditional monetary system and the cost of printing fiat currencies, transporting them, housing them, setting up banks, hiring people and the resources that consumes, etc etc. It also inaccurately calculates electric usage needed to make it all happen. What we have today is also not what will ultimately be adopted as time progresses. Bitcoin is a 1.0 technology and has a lot of problems. Credit card networks have been around 60 something years. There are other issues with it and some of these issues have already been solved. Other crypto currencies for example have mathematically proven anonymity properties for example. A half-flaw in the original design. Other solutions are being worked on to make it crypto currencies scale. The world could not adopt crypto currencies as things stand period. The technology couldn't handle it. However the technology can handle the current rates of adoption. The only reason Bitcoin failed to handle it last year was because they refused to adapt the software to handle the demand unlike at least some crypto currencies. At no point did crypto currencies fail- in that while Bitcoin was a problem other crypto currencies were not and people continued to utilize those that adapted instead. Dash came out ahead and is now #1 crypto currency in New Hampshire in terms of acceptance, adoption, and use.

Argument is easily refuted

[Anonymous Coward]

World economy prior to 1914 was mostly gold based. The supply of gold (newly mined gold) was far lower than the increase of population, hence most of countries that had gold standard were facing de-facto deflation.

However economies still grew, yet the phenomenon has been noticeable by comparatively low prices of goods and services. Economy also grew because of innovations.

As such, deflation argument is straight of Keynesian school of thought and, as demonstrated earlier, is not proven.

Economy did grow in the past after all with limited gold supply.

Another offsetting factor to consider was that military spending clearly had boundaries (you cant spend the gold that you do not have).

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we just use gov backed currencies - they're rate limited

Zimbabwe laughs while using 1 billion trillion Zimbabwean dollars as toilet paper.

Something to consider though ...

[Tjp($)pjT]

Bitcoins will be mined out in about 3 years. So difficult to mine them for 16. Once it drops back to only transaction fees, and no new coin awards, then there will be many fewer miners. And if they use solar, theyâ(TM)re intercepting heat and redistributing it. Maybe we can create giant thermocouple devices and turn the heat to microwave energy and beam it into space... yes I know it canâ(TM)t work that way... but bitcoin mining will end soon...

Re:Something to consider though ...

[JesseMcDonald]

Bitcoins will be mined out in about 3 years.

Where did you hear that? Bitcoin mining is asymptotic, not linear. Every four years the block reward is cut in half. In 40 years (more or less) we'll reach block 2,730,000, and at that point we'll still be adding about 300 BTC per year to the total. The last bitcoin isn't projected to be mined until 2140.

Even if it were linear we'd still have 5.5 years, not three, given the current block reward of 12.5 BTC per block, 10 minutes per block, and 3.65 million bitcoins remaining to be mined. I can only assume that you thought the reward was fixed at 25 BTC per block, which would work out to ~2.7 years remaining if it hadn't already halved two years ago, with similar reductions scheduled in 2020 and 2024.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

Your attacks on Proof-of-Stake (PoS) apply to Proof-of-Work (PoW) as well. PoW is dominated by monied interests that can build massive mining farms and secure the necessary power contracts to run them. Some have gone so far as to fund the production of ASICs for no reason other than to carry out specific PoW algorithms (and only CryptoNight has deployed an effective response to ASICs).

There isn't a single, widely-used PoW system today that can somehow restrict miners to a few GPUs or some finite hashrate.

The problem isn't bitcoin's energy use

[Procrasti]

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.

If

[Anonymous Coward]

If that happens, then Bitcoin will kill many energy wasteful things from the banking sector so the net effect might be less used energy..

I have not read through all this ,.. but,..

[Anonymous Coward]

is crypto currency banking more energy efficient than normal banking?
Sorry I cannot define "normal banking" or "crypto currency banking", so just take a guess.

Big blocks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Satoshi envisioned bigger blocks. More transactions per block increases capacity without increasing energy usage. Fuck Core and Blockstream for killing BTC. Bitcoin Cash is bitcoin now. It's bitcoin as intended and will change the world. How much energy do banksters use defrauding everyone?

Some context

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is true of Bitcoin, then it's far more true of the traditional financial sector. The amount of cars driving to work, sky-scrapers full of people, office and factory equipment, etc. being powered to run the current system is phenomenal. Even if calculations being made in this article would hold into the future (spoiler - they won't, because of technological improvements to Bitcoin, and other oversights in their calculations), then it is kind of incidental. There are many industries whose energy consumption could overheat the world if we keep using carbon-producing energy sources. With or without new energy-consuming technologies, we should focus on solving the inescapable problem: clean energy.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[themusicgod1]

Global tax on carbon.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[themusicgod1]

and secure the necessary power contracts to run them.

Massive power contracts are more expensive than most available power. The problem isn't the power, it's access to equipment. Something that the entire world outside of china has massively underfunded investment into the prerequisites for. People still use electric and fossil fuel based heating systems rather than running bitcoin miners to produce heat (including for heating food). There is plenty of low hanging fruit of energy that is simply wasted.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[AmiMoJo]

As a society, our energy needs are going to continue to increase

Disagree. We can have a better quality of life if we decrease energy consumption, and tech is getting more efficient, not less. Phones run for longer on the same size battery, cars go further for every kWh of energy expended.

Chinese Scheme To Waste Resources

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for wasting all our resources on magical beans gais! You fucking suckers.

Re: Dont you ever tire of being wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy standing in line to buy water from Canada pleb.

Herein lies the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this, is that it makes a couple of very invalid assumptions.

It assumes that BtC (or other cryptocurrency in general) will expand in the same manner that credit/debit cards have.

It assumes that growth will not be abated by increasing energy costs due to the constant increasing energy demands, which is wholly unreasonable.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't "externalities of burning fossil fuels". The problem is that eCurrencies have no intrinsic value.

All the mining performed doesn't have any value outside of the eCurrency asking for it. Why does the eCurrency ask for mining? Why, so the eCurrency can exist and not crash a market. It's the perfect bit of circular logic!

eCurrency mining is the very definition of Makework. Dig a ditch and then fill it in. No one needed a ditch, no one wanted a ditch, and having dug a ditch, the ditch's presence is objectionable so it must be destroyed. Or something like that.

Re:That's nothing. The oceans should be boiling no

[Anonymous Coward]

That can be blamed on all the hipsters who moved there and cooled it off.

Worse than useless

[Trogre]

So not only is this a worthless gold rush that only helps the early adopters (not helped with marketing terms such as "mining" rather than "number crunching"), but it's actively harming the planet.

And humanity. How many trillion CPU/GPU cycles have been diverted from actually worthwhile projects like folding@home as a result of this crypto frenzy?

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been some analysis that the banking industry consumes at least a magnitude greater energy than bitcoin would at its scale. Think of all the cars people drive to work, big office buildings etc that are all overhead to create the networks you use in the traditional system. Huge resource usage. Bitcoin is currently a tiny tiny fraction of that.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[dAzED1]

Or a combination. I produce far more than I consume, for instance, despite having 2 cars. Without both HE products, my solar wouldn't be able to keep up. The goal isn't to keep our total energy usage down, it's to not let our usage outpace our ability to scrub and make clean energy.

Re:Seems to be a flaw with all proof of work syste

[amicusNYCL]

Yes, phones and cars are more efficient, and in 9 years the bitcoin network has been invented and is on pace to raise global temps. Existing things get more efficient, but we aren't going to stop inventing, or hold off on a new technology because of the impact it might have on a future power grid. We WILL need more energy.

It's great that an iPhone today is better than it was when it was invented, but the bitcoin network came about 2 years after the first iPhone.