Archive for March, 2021

Did Trump benefit from the Riots?

March 3, 2021

It is now almost two months since the riots at Capitol Hill, speaking from a safe distance in time. It seems that:

  • Trump now owns and controls the Republican Party.
  • He has persuaded the Republicans to purge the party of dissent, and of those people who stood for principle and reality, against him.
  • Republicans will no longer even attempt to speak the truth about him, or they are gone.
  • He is, assuming he survives, a guaranteed candidate for the 2024 election, and if people are not enthusiastic for Biden, then he may well win.
  • Republicans involved in counting the vote, know the risk they take if they don’t ensure that Trump wins.
  • Republican states are apparently already increasing their ability to deregister voters and fix elections.
  • He has earned a considerable amount of money from his fans by portraying himself as the victim of a plot.
  • Fox has hired people he likes and who worked well with him, so they will be even more pro-Trump, and less of a news station.
  • He will probably be able to portray criminal charges against himself as anti-Trump mania, and may be able to fix up, or frighten judges or juries.
  • He may well now be able to threaten people with mob rule, and his capacity for stochastic terrorism is greatly increased.
  • Other people are being blamed for the riots, so he keeps his supporters.
  • He has demonstrated, yet again, he can say or do anything. If he becomes the next president, he will have no effective opposition, and nothing to curtail his vengeance, on those who hinted at opposing him.
  • The riot was his beer hall putsch, and he did not even go to jail. He suffered no inconvenience at all from attempting to steal an election. Not even the slightest. People talked about charges, but so far no sign. We can assume he will continue to increase his hold on the Right and increase his encouragement of direct violence.

If things had gone well for him, or as planned, it is possible that he could have been able to declare a state of emergency and martial law, or at least hurt and damage people who opposed him, or who followed the law like Mike Pence – and it would not have been his fault if Pence had died. “Terribly Sad” he might say.

***********

From an even later period of time, late July 2021, the group identification levels and binaries seem to have increased even further. Democrats now seem to be considered completely untrustworthy and evil by many non-fanatics on the Right.

It is now perfectly acceptable to say that the riot was like a capitol tour, that there was love in the air, that it is the fault of Democrats, that Democrats are communist traitors who are persecuting innocent protestors, that the election was fixed by China (who have taken over the Democrats) and so on.

Many seem to say the riot could not have occurred because conservatives are peaceful, therefore the images are faked or the rioters were not real Trump followers. The beating of police officers is denied, they are “crisis actors” and “angry left-wing political activists”. One black officer is apparently discredited because he thinks there is white racism in the US… talk about cancelling.

It will take real strength of mind not to go along with this and the continuing purge of any dissent from the party.

So the riot both ‘shows’ the anger of ‘conservatives,’ and tells them that they are innocent and being persecuted. It has not harmed Trump at all, and helped to confirm his standing as the next Candidate for President. And he will win if Democrats do not all get out to vote – assuming it is still legal in Republican controlled states… [that is a joke]

Bitcoin…. and Energy

March 1, 2021

I’ve heard this story many times [for example, see here], but here is another version…

The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) apparently claims that Bitcoin probably has and energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 annualised terawatt hours (TWh), with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours.

The UK’s electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina and the Netherlands use about the same amount of energy as the CCAF’s best guess for Bitcoin.

as Bitcoin gets more valuable, the computing effort expended on creating and maintaining it – and therefore the energy consumed – inevitably increases.

We can track how much effort miners are making to create the currency.

They are currently reckoned to be making 160 quintillion calculations every second – that’s 160,000,000,000,000,000,000, in case you were wondering….

Alex de Vries, the founder of the Digiconomist website [says]

All the millions of trillions of calculations it takes to keep the system running aren’t really doing any useful work….”Right now we’re using a whole lot of energy to produce those calculations, but also the majority of that is sourced from fossil energy.”…

“We’d have to double our global energy production,” he says with a laugh. “For Bitcoin.”

He says it also limits the number of transactions the system can process to about five per second.

This doesn’t make for a useful currency, he argues.

Rowlatt How Bitcoin’s vast energy use could burst its bubble, BBC

Addenda

In a new research paper published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University have projected that on current trends, bitcoin mining electricity consumption will more than double from its current levels, peaking in 2024….

bitcoin [will] rank as the equivalent of the 12th largest electricity consumer amongst all countries, higher than the likes of major European economies, including Italy and Spain…. [and Australia].

It is estimated that around 70 per cent of bitcoin miners are located in China…. [and] is responsible for approximately 5.4 per cent of China’s electricity emissions…

[The paper’s authors state:] we find that the carbon emission pattern of Bitcoin blockchain will become a potential barrier against the emission reduction target of China.”

Mazengarb Bitcoin mining to consume more electricity than whole of Australia by 2024. RenewEconomy 7 April 2021

It is rather frustrating to think of how much renewable energy we will have to produce to power this thing on top of everything else we have to power. Bitcoin is a currency essentially based on massive amounts of electricity consumption, and hopes that people will pay real money or real products for more bitcoin.

Like all money its value is a matter of faith that other people will want it.

My only hope is that advertisements are going up on bus shelters saying “If you see bitcoin on a poster, it’s time to buy.” Anyone in finance knows that when you are trying to let the rubes into a secret it’s because those in the know are selling off….

Not great news

March 1, 2021

I am simply quoting the UN NDC Synthesis Report:

The Parties’ [to the Paris Agreements total GHG emissions are, on average, estimated to be:

  • By 2025, 2.0 per cent higher than the 1990 level (13.77 Gt CO2 eq), 2.2 per cent higher than the 2010 level (13.74 Gt CO2 eq) and 0.5 per cent higher than the 2017 level (13.97 Gt CO2 eq);
  • By 2030, 0.7 per cent lower than in 1990, 0.5 per cent lower than in 2010 and 2.1 per cent lower than in 2017.

…the estimates suggest the possibility of the Parties’ emissions peaking before 2030. 

[However,]

According to the SR1.5, to be consistent with global emission pathways with no or limited overshoot of the 1.5 °C goal, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions need to decline by about 45 per cent from the 2010 level by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050. For limiting global warming to below 2 °C, CO2 emissions need to decrease by about 25 per cent from the 2010 level by 2030 and reach net zero around 2070. Deep reductions are required for non-CO2 emissions as well. Thus, the estimated reductions referred to above fall far short of what is required, demonstrating the need for Parties to further strengthen their mitigation commitments under the Paris Agreement.

[The possible good news]

Many Parties provided information on long-term mitigation visions, strategies and targets for up to and beyond 2050, referring to climate neutrality, carbon neutrality, GHG neutrality or net zero emissions. Mindful of the inherent uncertainty of such long-term estimates, the information indicates that:
•The Parties’ collective GHG emission level could be 87–93 per cent lower in 2050 than in 2017;
•Their annual per capita emissions are estimated at 0.5–1.0 t CO2 eq for 2050, which is 87–93 per cent lower than for 2017, suggesting that by 2050 these per capita emissions will be within the range implied in the 2 ºC and 1.5 ºC with low overshoot scenarios in the SR1.5.

[it would be nice if they stuck with a standardised base line such as 2010 or 1990 rather than shifted about.]