Topic: [2023-04-26] The Guardian - Bitcoin is terrible for the environment – can it... (Read 200 times)

right, the allegations are that those individuals are in fact what you might call a "cat's paw" for corporate influence. these things are not easy to prove, but it's often the case that someone in that kind of position would say, quite upfront and publicly: "of course I work/worked for British Petroleum, but that in no way affects the decisions I make when assuming the role as a trustee of the group"

someone on the Guardian's board did have such a connection to HSBC in the recent past, and may still have for all I know, but the details are always alot of work with these kinds of issues.

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think of it another way: if you were one of the companies The Guardian (and various others faux-anti establishment activist organizations) unsuccessfully attacks, would you:

• directly attack them by stopping them altogether (somehow)
• infiltrate them, and then continue to attack yourself wearing an activist mask, but never do or suggest anything effective

if The Guardian wanted effective opposition to anti-democratic organizations, why have they spent so much time and effort promoting that takes away people's power in more insidious ways? corporate culture was always pushed quite voraciously by The Guardian, just with a different spin on it (as a former Guardian reader, I remember this well)

would it be a big surprise to discover that while hippy-dippy corporation are actually owned by the same handful of Wall Street asset holding mega corporations, that the exact same thing is true of the media groups that promoted the (fake) hippy-dippy corporations? I don't know, but, go figure.

Not to defend the Guardian, but where did you get that information about them being funded by the HSBC from?
They are owned by "The Scott Trust Limited", which, despite the name is probably not even a trust but a regular private company limited by shares. The Scott Trust Limited does not appear to have any corporate shareholders, only individuals:

Thanks for the clarification. These British media orgs really confuse me sometimes.

that is definitely not a fact

The Guardian is funded by a "trust" company, the ownership of which was at least in part held by HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation) recently. This is a somewhat unique ownership structure for a media organization, I believe there are appointed "trustees" who have various extraordinary rights to change how the organization is run. Presumably the trustees hold private votes as to who will replace trustees who leave the board, like cardinals in the vatican choosing the pope and suchlike.

that's not really "independent community-funded", I'm sure The Guardian will accept reader donations to make it appear that way, but the real power is in the trust that owns the Guardian media group and makes it's decisions.

The Guardian is known for their left-leaning political stance, even if they were entirely community-funded, they'd still have to cater to their donors, who are also majority left-leaning and most likely fully on board (and non-critical) of the "green" agenda.

But looks like they are still pretty reliant on advertising revenue, judging by their latest available financial statements:

And in the same article right below the text, the following plea appears:


How do you expect people to take you seriously if your content is attacking free speech itself?

Those reporters forgot to talk about https://bitcoincleanup.com, and if it wasn't for the fact that The Guardian is an independent community-funded news org, I would've assumed that this was yet another sponsored article by Greenpeace.

it's the typical acolyte's (or really: zealot's) approach: no level of conformance to their standards is enough

and so we all have a one-way ticket to conflict of some kind, and I'm glad to be on the side where people:

• do their own thinking
• aren't afraid to disagree
• try to live without depending too much on others
• are ideologically flexible
• are solution focused
• truly want a happy life for themselves and others
• above all: who respect the wishes of others to live their lives in their own way

...because whatever shape the disagreement takes in the end, it's pretty obvious that people who do not have such qualities will not get what they're looking for (which for sure no longer applies to all avid readers of all newspapers, not just the guardian)

Haha damn, that's a pretty grim outlook at the world. But I guess you may be fundamentally right.
I do think, however, that Bitcoin's lobby is already there, even though no centralized company is pumping a huge chunck of their revenue directly into advertising. Since many more larger investment firms are involved, the urge to have a more positive / realistic perception of the facts surrounding Bitcoin has increased and will continue to do so.

Nah. It will stop immediately if only there's one or more company from the crypto-industry that would pay the Guardian for advertising. FUD would stop immediately, and if the money is right, they'd change the tone 180 degrees on a whim.

The only problem is that Bitcoin doesn't have a strong lobby.

This "attack" on Bitcoin will never stop, because it does not suit the agenda of the people that are behind the "FUD" and misinformation. They can be faced with the facts, like you posted here and they will simply ignore it, because they will cherry pick the data that will further their agenda.

We should balance the scales with mass education of the public on a global scale, so that the people themselves can make an informed decision, when it comes to information like this. 

For anyone that feels infected/affected by the FUD from The Guardian, here are two amazing resources addressing the issue of Bitcoin and its energy consumption in an objective way.

https://bitcoincleanup.com/
https://endthefud.org/energy

One would wish major news-outlets would strive for objective journalism. Ofc they don't but still... wouldn't it be nice. 
When you read the Guardian's article, there is no discussion about what the energy is actually used for. The paragraph about Bitcoins energy consumption is short and contains almost no real journalistic effort at all. Ugh.

I don't know that why they can only see Bitcoin mining when it comes to climate change. There are many other processes that are causing huge carbon emissions that aren't even discussed by those professional journalists. Like Woodie mentioned that the carbon emission caused by automobile have reached alarming levels but still no body blames the role of those in climate change the way they attack the mining process of Bitcoin.

Most of the carbon emissions are caused by burning of fossil fuels and they aren't burnt directly for Bitcoin mining as most of the mining farms are going with green energy which has almost no carbon footprint. The fossil fuels are burned in automobile transporting systems and almost all household activates that involve cooking for sometimes just to keep the places warm. Those should also be mentioned and should be controlled first before targeting Bitcoin mining.

The simple agenda is to convert Bitcoin POW to POS, and they think that will help out to reduce the carbon emissions. I don't think so that only moving Bitcoin to POS will give any good results to those environmentalists related to carbon emissions. The other industries will still be emitting carbon into the atmosphere and they can't control those areas.

It's pretty annoying how they equate energy usage with carbon emissions, without considering the source of the energy for BTC mining and whether it's "green" or not.


I think you mean mining farms not pools. In open pools, we don't really know the source of energy that each individual miner uses.

On the positive side, WEF released some video praising some BTC mining company for using energy from recycled gas. Of course they've done it without a single mention of Bitcoin, but still.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/world-economic-forum-recognizes-the-benefits-of-bitcoin-mining-5450069

Carbon emissions control is a top agenda for environmental  conservation but Its funny how these guys want to pick on the weaker guy and not address the elephant in the room...the Automobile  industry. The Automotive industry has one of the biggest carbon footprints out there but these guys are never heard, but if compared to crypto, eth second biggest coin by marketcap changed their code to try fix things and do away with mining  ,bitcoin mining is going green and we have pools already on the green side and again they never report the positives that have happened so far...All i see are enemies of progress!!

Here we go again. We haven't heard "Bitcoin is bad for environment !!1!" fud for a while. But it's back. This time from The Guardian (British left-leaning news portal).

Bitcoin is terrible for the environment – can it ever go green?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/26/bitcoin-mining-climate-crisis-environmental-impact