Environmentalists have discovered the two new things most likely to turn the planet into a molten orb of glowing red climate death.
By awful coincidence, they happen to be the same two things that men enjoy doing perhaps more than anything in the world (at least when their wives or girlfriends aren’t looking.)
a) making vast sums of money out of exceedingly risky and speculative cryptocurrency trading when all the experts are saying it’s like the 17th century Dutch Tulipmania, only with rocket boosters and sprinkled with essence of Enron, Sub-Prime Mortgages and the South Sea Bubble.
and
b) looking at screen pictures of purty, naked ladies and re-enacting the scene in South Park where the internet is banned and Randy breaks into the trailer housing the very last computer console still connected to Pornhub…
Yep. They’re not joking. Bitcoin and porn are the two latest things which, experts tell us, are causing “global warming”.
First, porn. According to this groundbreaking investigation in The Atlantic, pornography is causing even more danger to the planet than it did in the days when it simply involved cutting down forests to make glossy paper for dirty magazines.
Precise numbers don’t exist to quantify specifics, but the impression across the industry is that viewership is way, way up. Pornhub, the world’s most popular porn site, provides some of the only accessible data on its yearly web-traffic report. The first “Year in Review” post in 2013 tabulated that people visited the site 14.7 billion times. By 2016, that number had almost doubled, to 23 billion, and those visitors watched more than 4.59 billion hours of porn. And Pornhub is just one site.
Is pornography in the digital era leaving a larger carbon footprint than it did during the days of magazines and videos? Obtaining raw numbers will always be a sticking point, because the stigmatized industry has never kept track of sales like the music and film industries, and has no significant archives. But if pornography experts’ estimates are accurate, they suggest a rare scenario where digitization might have increased the overall consumption of porn so much that the principal of dematerialization gets flipped on its head. The internet could allow people to spend so much time looking at porn that it’s actually worse for the environment.
Step away from the keyboard! Think of future generations! Take a cold shower!
Now, Bitcoin. This, we now learn from experts, is the other terrible thing which is causing global warming.
The site Digiconomist, which conducted a major survey of the energy use of bitcoin, found that one mine in China was using as much energy as a Boeing 747 to try and generate more of the increasingly valuable cryptocurrency.
According to some calculations, the process of mining Bitcoin now consumes more electricity than 159 countries, including Ireland and most countries in Africa.
If Bitcoin miners were a country they’d rank 61st in the world in terms of electricity consumption.
Liberals are very worried about this. Here’s New Republic:
We only have 32 years left for carbon emissions to peak and then rapidly decrease, if our planet is to remain livable. We don’t have time or resources to waste on Bitcoin.
And here is Vox:
If Bitcoin miners care about the environment a fraction as much as they care about profits, they should switch to cleaner electricity.
But then, liberals are great believers in the power of central banks and the expertise of Neo-Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman. They do not believe in cryptocurrencies because they are much more of an anarcho-capitalist thing, beloved by people who are into stuff like Kek and Pepe the Frog memes.
Ergo, liberals have missed out completely on the crypto-currency goldrush. Ergo, they are feeling sore and will do anything to diss Bitcoin, even though actually they’ve picked quite the wrong kind of flaw to make conservatives give even a smidgen of a damn because most conservatives don’t believe in man-made global warming, whether it’s caused by Bitcoin, pornography or anything else.
Definitely, though, if pornography causes global warming then liberals should be worried most. That’s because, at a conservative estimate, liberals consume approximately 150 x more pornography than young right-wing males do.
This is because in the circles in which young male liberals move, potential female partners have either rendered themselves so hideous (body fat, unshaven armpits, blue hair, nose rings, general lack of hygiene, etc) as to put themselves quite beyond the pale of acceptable attractiveness, or simply refuse to put out because of something someone told them they’d read in a book on their Gender Studies and Advanced Resentment and Entitlement course.
And also, of course, as we would put it in Britain because liberals are a bunch of grade A, copper-bottomed, ocean-going wankers.
Read more at Breitbart
These same Eco-Wackos rake in millions of dollars a year from the usial suckers who beleive everything they see or hear from the enviromental hucksters and con men like Al Bore’ Leonardo DiCaprio,Laurie David,David Suzuki Etc
Socialists are anti-consumption crusaders. I once read that socialism found traction in Britain during and after the wars, when rationing was necessary. Now it’s energy, it must be rationed and taxed, for our own good.
Lately, ranting against LED’S is popular. Why?
In a case of unintended consequences, high electricity costs have pushed us into energy efficient lighting. LED’S are so efficient, we’re brightening our skies. Enviro-squirrels miss the darkness. All that light is a crime against nature.
I doubt the statement “at a conservative estimate, liberals consume approximately 150 x more pornography than young right-wing males do.” In a fundamentalist Christian web site there was the estimate that 60 percent of the men of that faith with computer access view pornography at least once a month. The article concluded that the ministers had a lot of work to do. Of course, that means the percentage is higher for men of all faiths.
The idea that this is a problem for the environment is based on the incorrect assumption that we have a climate change problem. Though it isn’t a problem, I would like to point out there is a matter of relativity here. Based on my family and friends I’m sure that Face Book and other social media is responsible for more energy consumption than pornography. I have seen people spend hours at a time on Face Book.
For the Bitcoin miners to consume as much energy as the 61st consuming nation is mind boggling. Fortunately there is not a climate change problem.
When I first read about Bitcoin mining using so much energy I envision some energy intense operation in some place like Africa. My oldest son is a software engineer and he filled me in. I’ll share what he said in case anyone else is as much in the dark as I was.
The Bitcoin was originally created as a secure and secret way to pay for something. Even in it is beginning it wasn’t that useful for that purpose because of the involve process and heavy processing power needed for a transaction. At first Bitcoin mining was relatively easy but by design it was made more intensive as time went on until today it requires tremendous processing power. The Bitcoin follows a condensed history of gold. At first it was a currency. Then it became an item for speculation. Near the beginning of the Bitcoin 200 were used to purchase a pizza. At the beginning of this year a single coin was worth $1,000. Now it is $17,000. Like other items where speculation drives the price to wild values, the price of the Bitcoin will crash, it is just a matter of when.