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60 thoughts on “It’s all over, folks”

  2. dausuul

    Normal people might think that this changes nothing, since nuclear power used for Bitcoin is just taken away from some other use, and that other user will have to make up the difference with fossil fuels, and we're right back where we started.

    But if you're a Bitcoin believer, "something for nothing" is kind of central to your worldview, I suppose.

  4. cld

    This will last until QAnon realizes it makes electricity radioactive and all the bitcoins along with it.

    Thus they will crash and burn, and will have to spend their lives pretending they had nothing to do with it while hiding their scars and festering boils that never heal behind suddenly fashionable huge beards and tattoos.

        1. KawSunflower

          CLD, I can't believe that YOUR dad is both "omniscient" & rude!

          Intelligent, yes - like father, like son. But hopefully not "gray."

  5. Spadesofgrey

    Bitcoin is a Chinese anti-dollar front. Don't fall for the myth the Chinese government opposes it. It's backed by considerable influence of party members and serves as a wedge against the dollar. Eventually it will be nationalized into a Chinese reserve currency in Asia. Removing U.S. Business and $$$ from Asia is the real goal. Return of the Iron Curtain.

      2. daveferguson

        "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." ;--)

        1. illilillili

          Hmmm... You're saying that spadesofgrey usually incoherent postings are a "parody of Fundamentalism"? That would explain a lot...

    1. wvmcl2

      The absurdity of using massive amounts of energy to "produce" a fictional medium of exchange become even more absurd when the result is more unstorable nuclear waste.

          1. Mitch Guthman

            I’m not sure that I understand the point you’re making. The reason why the federal government is forced to underwrite public insurance and heavily subsidize private insurance for nuclear facilities is that private insurance companies are unwilling to write policies with premiums that wouldn’t make nuclear power prohibitively expensive.

            Nuclear power plants exist only because the government gives them money and protection from civil liability.

      2. Lounsbury

        Nuclear waste is perfectly storeable, indeed it's also recyclable via reprocessing.

        Now the Greens go off on 1980s comic book understanding of nuclear but that's merely Green Left fundamentalist belief systems.

        1. illilillili

          Yes. What could go wrong with keeping large amounts of ever-increasing highly toxic poisons around? And why is no one reprocessing this waste since it is so easy to do?

          Speaking of comic-book understandings...

          2. cmayo

            What could go wrong with failing to choose between relatively easily contained nuclear waste, and not-at-all-contained greenhouse gases?

            Unfounded fear of nuclear power is part of the GHG equation.

          3. Lounsbury

            First, again the comic book understanding of the Lefty Greens.

            Radioactive decay = ever decreasing. And further it's nothing that does not in fact exist in the Mantle of the earth itself.

            Second, there is not no one reprocessing, just no Americans reprocessing. The French, as an example in the West, have been doing so at scale for years with no problems.

            Reprocessing is not hard. The hurdle and restriction is not technical difficulty, it is proliferation fears (as in nuclear weapons), but also hard Green Lefty irrational comic book fears.

            Transition further to Thorium over Uranium would even further mitigate the now largely irrational 1970s-1980s GreenLefty fears of nukes and the confounding and confusing of nuclear reactors generally with weapons.

          4. Lounsbury

            And indeed Cmayo puts his finger on it.

            Nuclear waste
            (1) is point waste and really quite possible to treat and control (including reprocessing)
            (2) contra GHG, which are not point source and not easily contained or controlled despite Lefty Green innumerate dreams.

            Nuclear is an addressable challenge if one is technically rational and informed, particularly modern nuclear. France shows that it is fully and completely possible (if one is not letting irrational Lefty Greens throw up hurdles to sabotage it)

          5. Lounsbury

            And for overview, see IAEA overview of Frenc nuclear fuel recycling program, in its 30 year glory. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-the-nuclear-fuel-cycle-what-can-oui-learn
            “The recycling of spent fuel is a major element of the strategy of the French nuclear sector, which has more than 30 years of industrial experience,” says Denis Lépée, Senior Vice President and Head of the Nuclear Fuel Division at EDF, the French electric utility company that operates the country’s nuclear power plants ... Through recycling, up to 96% of the reusable material in spent fuel can be recovered. In its 6th National Report under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, France states that the national policy of recycling spent fuel has meant that it needs 17% less natural uranium to operate its plants than it would without recycling.

            Lessons include standardisation so scale and simplification are achieved. Rigorous oversight by the state of the private actors, and recycling....

            So no only is it not "no one" doing it, but there is in fact a strong private-public model which demonstrates an effective near term removal of fossil fuels from base-load and a stable generation base to build renewables with for a heavy electrification of most fossil fuel using energy generation needs (most, but air and certain long-distance road travel).

            If the Green Left was not caught up in superstition and outmoded thinking (in a mirror image of the Fossil Fuel right's own superstition and outmoded thinking), we could make enormous advances in decarbonisation.

      3. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        After the killing a few daytrader redditor types made on AMC & Gamestop, everyone is looking to book a reservation at the stonky-tonk.

      5. cmayo

        Right, but if they're gonna be doing bitcoin anyway... better to have them using renewables than fossil fuels. So, what's the problem?

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      In this Tonawanda Wingstop, a bit is attached to a Black n' Decker drill & coins are what they stash for trips to New York City for the peep shows, but they do know this: energy expended in futile alt-currency mining is no different than the Klondike goldpanners who gave up years of their lives to maybe make it rich.

  10. Justin

    Tell me again why I should sacrifice so that people not yet born can, in fact, be born. If the human species goes though a massive population crash or extinction long after I'm dead, I don't believe I will notice. So whether than crash happens due to climate change in 100 years, an asteroid collision in 1000 years, or the sun's death in a few billion years, it is of no consequence. One or more of things will happen and there isn't anything you can do about it.

    Carpe diem!

    If the goal is to have a thriving population of 50 billion humans on planet earth in 200 years, please explain why I should sacrifice today to achieve that end?

        1. Justin

          Not fun for you or me, but the folks doing it are getting rich and so they do fun things with it. But again, I agree it is a poor use of resources.

      2. Justin

        It’s a simple question. Why must I sacrifice today so that some many billions of humans can populate the planet in 100 years? What wrong with a human population of only 5 billion? Or 3 or 2?

        And yes, I’m probably not going to live past 2050. And so no, I’m really not that interested in sacrificing. We should be honest about that. No one is really interested in sacrificing. That’s why we have to pretend we can fix it without any sacrifice. I don’t personally believe it, but since they can’t bring themselves to argue otherwise, they won’t ask me to help out.

        So the Bitcoin miners will get their electricity without any regard to the consequences.

        1. illilillili

          What are you being asked to sacrifice? The smell of coal dust in the morning?

          There's nothing wrong with a population of 5 billion humans. What's wrong is your willingness to kill 3+ billion humans to achieve that population level.

          Let's see if we can make a simple analogy. You're driving a car toward a school cross walk. A group of children start to walk through the cross walk. You could slow down and stop and let them go through it, or you could barrel through them. They're going to die someday anyway; why should you be even slightly inconvenienced.

          A better analogy: The road is wide enough and the children are grouped so that you could easily drive around the children without even slowing down. But you still want to barrel through them?

          1. Justin

            No one is suggesting that 3 billion people be killed tomorrow. The change in climate will eventually make it unreasonable to have children. Don’t have kids. Or have fewer. The population will shrink. Some will die sooner then they would otherwise (as with COVID-19). This is tragic, but inevitable.

            And of course I’m not being asked to sacrifice yet. Not even Bitcoin mining. But if you want to stop or reverse climate change, then you will have to sacrifice a lot.

            You can’t get to your goal without it.

    3. Austin

      "Tell me again why I should sacrifice so that people not yet born can, in fact, be born."

      It's really too bad a lot of existing people's ancestors sacrificed in the past so that their descendants could be with us here in America today.

    4. illilillili

      The goal is to be able to support a likely population of 10 billion people in 50 years. Preferably without having to relocate Miami and without the entire population of Bangladesh moving to new countries.

  11. ScentOfViolets

    It's not my preferred development path, but if bitcoin puts Gen IV reactors on the map, I won't gainsay them. Also, the antinuke types are dying in ever greater numbers, so there's that as well.

  12. ruralhobo

    The only good thing about bitcoin is that it might make some of the obscene amounts of money that overhang the real economy disappear into thin air.

    Other than that, rather nuclear than coal, and rather no energy wasting than either.

  14. illilillili

    Does it strike anyone as inherently wrong that we use a fission reaction to boil water to spin wires in an electric field? And that fusion reactors, if they ever work, will also boil water? Boiling water seems like such a primitive technology.

    1. ScentOfViolets

      Well, I don't know about steam being 'lo-tech'. But if it floats your boat there's always MHD power generation.

      Remember though, it's not how flashy the technology is (anyone remember those turbine-powered concept cars?), it's what gets you the most bang for the buck.

  15. rational thought

    Bitcoin might not be inherently that less illogical than any money simply backed by governments with no hard backing by things of real worth. And not even talking about gold. Gold itself is a form of currency whose value is largely just because other people value it. It's price is far beyond any inherent value.

    But any currency needs to have some way to not just let others copy it. Gold has a physical limit set by cost of gold mining . Bitcoin limits by requiring transactions needing a lot of power.

    Yes, it seems crazy that all this effort and power is being used for bitcoin. But really any different than all of the effort to mine gold, which in the past even caused wars?

    And traditional currency is controlled simply by the power and technology of governments to stop counterfeiting. But there is nothing stopping the govt itself from printing money and inflating away the value .

    Bitcoin mining is just a way to limit the supply by requiring some sort of work . Govts substitute coercion.

    Why maybe a new currency can be invented where you mine it by doing something productive for the world, like maybe planting trees for the environment.

    But to work it has to be objective and measurable , and something you would not otherwise do - not sure planting trees works that easy .

    Can anyone think of some currency mining activity which could be used to good social purpose and yet is both 100% objective and measurable?

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