It’s funny and sad that they’re using an already debunked
1, flawed and paywalled-link
2 paper as
„Fact“ Nr. 2. And how it’s blindly cited again and again over 100 times by other publications.
1 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335457532_Could_Bitcoin_Emissions_Push_Global_Warming_Above_2_C2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8Can be accessed here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328581842_Bitcoin_emissions_alone_could_push_global_warming_above_2C
To debunk this bs again(already been done by Dittmar and Praktiknjo, 2019) and not let them get away with manipulative unscientific lies this easily - we first need to look at the methodology used, described on the last page:
Amount of CO2e produced by Bitcoin usage.[…]
To assess the carbon footprint of the global Bitcoin Network, using as reference the year 2017, we used the following approach.
We started by compiling a list of current hardware suitable for Bitcoin and their energy efficiencies (hashes per electricity consumed, Supplementary Table 1). To each block mined in 2017 (data from
https://blocktrail.com), we assigned a random hardware from Supplementary Table 1 and multiplied the number of hashes required to solve the block by the energy efficiency of the random hardware; this returned the amount of electricity consumed to solve the given block.
To estimate Bitcoin electricity consumption in 2017, Mora et al. assume that each Bitcoin block was randomly mined on hardware included in a self-compiled list of 62 devices. As this list contains many old devices with high energy intensities, the resulting average hardware energy intensity and electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining are approximately ten times higher than other estimates (see the Supplementary Information).
So they basically used an outdated list of hardware
3, which already resulted in an completely inaccurate estimation of electricity consumption at the time of the paper. And then tried to estimate electricity consumption up until 2100 based on 2017 hardware. Totally ignoring basics about hardware development, scientific methodologies and common sense. Any output coming from this model can already only result wrongly with exaggerated estimates and were just a few lines in.
3 https://github.com/Camilo-Mora/Bitcoin/blob/master/Randi_TableS1.csv
But lets continue, because it doesnt stop here:
Projected usage and carbon emissions from Bitcoin.
[…]
We studied the carbon emissions of Bitcoin if it follows the adoption trends of other broadly used technologies.
[…]
The first year of usage for each technology was set to one, to allow comparison of trends among technologies (narrow grey lines in Fig. 1b). For each year, we calculated the average and lower and upper quantiles of per cent population using all technologies and applied a logistic model to such trends (the red line and red shading in Fig. 1b). The projected trends of technology usage adoption were used to estimate likely Bitcoin usage assuming a global total of ~314.2 billion cashless transactions. We used only cashless transactions that are likely to occur in places where infrastructure is already in place for the usage of Bitcoin as a reference (for example, we do not assume that Bitcoin will replace transactions using fiat currency). The CO2e emissions of projected Bitcoin usage were estimated using the CO2e emissions for Bitcoin transactions in 2017 as a reference. 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.
… we believe that the analysis of Mora et al. is flawed because their methodology ignores fundamental constraints imposed by the transaction-processing capacity of the Bitcoin network.
The diffusion scenarios presented by Mora et al. for Bitcoin transactions eventually assume ~314.2 billion Bitcoin-related cashless transactions per year. The corresponding throughput of roughly ~10,000 transactions per second would be at least two orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoins current transaction limits.
[…]
Mora et al. neither mention Bitcoin's transaction limit nor outline how it will be resolved to make their projection plausible. Instead, the applied methodology circumvents the scalability problem by implicitly reparameterizing the Bitcoin protocol to decrease the block interval and increase the number of blocks until the resulting transactions match the number of projected transactions. As the authors sample blocks from their base-year estimates, results are equal to those obtained from scaling electricity consumption in 2017 using projected transactions. Transaction growth is implicitly the sole driver for the electricity growth scenarios presented by Mora et al. However, neither in a reparameterized Bitcoin protocol, nor in the current protocol, is electricity consumption proportional to the transaction rate. Instead, Bitcoins electricity consumption is exclusively proportional to the hashrate, which is the computational capacity of the Bitcoin network. Hashrate growth, in turn, is driven by complex and mutually dependent relationships between mining rewards, transaction fees, hardware energy efficiency, electricity prices and the Bitcoin market price. Increases in throughput capacity, such as with SegWit, translate to a proportional decrease in electricity consumption per transaction, as the electricity consumption of blocks does not scale with the transaction rate.
They assumed ~314.2 billion yearly Bitcoin transactions and not even mentioning a block size limit anywhere. And then modeling future electricity consumption solely based on a transaction rate that cant even happen in practice. Basically basing the whole model on another protocol that doesnt even exist in reality.
This passed peer review, academia, one of the worlds biggest scientific journals and an army of journalists.
Its getting more and more cringe to read this paper, but theres also this:
In a recent commentary, Mora et al.' hypothesize that cumulative GHG emissions of Bitcoin alone could amount to ~231.4GtC within the next 16yr (on the basis of their median scenario), pushing global warming above 2°C. To put these numbers in context, the carbon budget of ~231.4GtC is equivalent to ~63 yr of emissions from global power generation at the rate observed in 2017 (that is, ~3.7 GtC). Bitcoin mining is undoubtedly electricity intensive. However, the electricity demand scenarios calculated by Mora et al. seem unlikely, as Bitcoin-related emissions would entail a tripling of global electricity generation within the next five years (see Supplement). We regard infrastructure bottlenecks and soaring electricity prices as barriers to such growth levels. For example, global electric power capacity increased by only ~ 17% over the past five years.
Spoiler alert, electricity generation didnt triple from 2017-2022(so the model is already unusable again by another factor) and idk if its worth it to go on when the whole paper has already been debunked long ago.
This is the state of science, journalism, activism and millions of marketing budget in 2022. Its sad, but i think we can also use the opportunity to debunk their arguments directly. If thats all they got.
