{"id":28396,"date":"2017-11-29T07:17:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T12:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28396"},"modified":"2017-11-29T07:17:59","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T12:17:59","slug":"did-anyone-do-even-a-minimal-check-on-the-sensationalist-bitcoin-electrical-consumption-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28396","title":{"rendered":"Did Anyone Do Even a Minimal Check on the Sensationalist Bitcoin Electrical Consumption Story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did Anyone Do Even a Minimal Check on the Sensationalist Bitcoin Electrical Consumption Story?<\/a><\/h3>\n

Check the context before uncritically accepting sensationalist conclusions.<\/i><\/p>\n

Let’s start with a primer on how to write a sensationalist story that can be passed off as “journalism:”<\/b><\/p>\n

1. Locate credible-sounding data that can be de-contextualized, i.e. sensationalized.<\/p>\n

2. Present the data as “fact” rather than data that requires verification by disinterested researchers.<\/p>\n

3. Exaggerate the data as much as possible and set the tone and context with emotionally laden words: “shocking,” etc.<\/p>\n

4. Select a context that sensationalizes the conclusion.<\/p>\n

Now let’s take a look at a story that has been swallowed whole, with little to no fact-checking or disinterested inquiry: bitcoin’s electrical consumption<\/b>, i.e. the electricity consumed by mining\/maintaining bitcoin’s blockchain.<\/p>\n

One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses as Much Energy as Your House in a Week<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s start by stipulating that energy consumption is a consequential matter worthy of serious inquiry.<\/b> It’s important to measure the energy consumption of all the systems that operate within the current status quo<\/i>, and compare the consumption levels of these systems.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the story.<\/p>\n

Right off the bat, the context we’re offered to grasp the enormity of bitcoin’s mining consumption is the electrical consumption of Nigeria<\/b>, a nation, we’re breathlessly informed, with 186 million residents. Wow! That’s a crazy amount of electrical consumption, right?<\/p>\n

Let’s do some very basic fact-checking before we accept sensationalist conclusions, shall we?<\/b><\/p>\n

Nigeria consumes about 24 billion kWh annually,<\/a> while the U.S. consumes 3,913 billion kWh annually.<\/p>\n

So Nigeria uses 3\/5th of 1% (0.6%) of the electricity the U.S. consumes.<\/b><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did Anyone Do Even a Minimal Check on the Sensationalist Bitcoin Electrical Consumption Story? Check the context before uncritically accepting sensationalist conclusions. Let’s start with a primer on how to write a sensationalist story that can be passed off as “journalism:” 1. Locate credible-sounding data that can be de-contextualized, i.e. sensationalized. 2. Present the data […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4174,17162,127,7499,14851,462,587,718],"class_list":["post-28396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitcoin-mining","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-electricity-consumption","tag-fact-checking","tag-journalism","tag-of-two-minds","tag-sensationalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28397,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28396\/revisions\/28397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}