“ A zero-emissions US is now pretty cheap “

[DeusxMac]

gabester wrote:
I just want to point out that as our grid becomes increasingly renewable-powered, zero emissions will slip away from our grasp thanks to upcoming energy-consumption increases from the likes of EVs...

as well as blockchain-derived virtual currencies and training/utilization of increasingly pervasive AI.

You lost me at that point.

[Acer]

Bitcoin represents half of data center energy use., and the virtural currency craze has just begun.

[mattkime]

I guess thats a question as to whether we're building capacity faster than demand is increasing.

gabester wrote:
I just want to point out that as our grid becomes increasingly renewable-powered, zero emissions will slip away from our grasp thanks to upcoming energy-consumption increases...

[davester]

This is good, but 2050 is too distant a target. At that point we will likely be too late and runaway irreversible warming may have taken hold.

[Ted King]

davester wrote:
This is good, but 2050 is too distant a target. At that point we will likely be too late and runaway irreversible warming may have taken hold.

Yeah, there are some really bad feedback loops that could get going at any time (and could conceivably already be on an unstoppable spiral) and the chances of them happening get greater the more we heat things up. But if the American public doesn't want to make the changes necessary, then I would still push for getting as much remediation as is politically practicable. I'm afraid that is what we are headed towards - a Congressionally butchered version of Biden's plans that fall far long of a 2050 target.

[Speedy]

Former president Trump has a plan for his 2024 victory march: Make America Pollute More Again.

[pdq]

I still don’t get “mining bitcoin”. My understanding is that they are searching for primes or something? I understand that can be useful in cryptography, but for a distance, it looks more like busywork that is poorly related or unrelated to the value of the bitcoins awarded.

So, a lot of computing power (and electricity) is used inefficiently in the pursuit of something that looks a lot like a speculative bubble.

But that’s my admittedly undereducated view.