"You made this up out of your head."
Nope, and frankly, I'm surprised you think this is a controversialpoint.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/lu-umc061919.php
Other than the military, we can assume that the government itself produces another 14 milllion metric tons of CO2 per year
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033083/ghg-emissions-us-federal-government-agencies/
That doesnt even include the banking system (US and global the also helps reserve the value of the US dollar), the fed.
Maybe we should add in that 140TWh...
https://medium.com/@zodhyatech/which-consumes-more-power-banks-or-bitcoins-8302750fe2bc
It also doesnt include the direct environmental damage the military costs by the US in deforestation, in creating famine and utterly salting the earth with chemicals and death... thats JUST the energy cost of running the US military and government. It also doesnt include all the other, now useless currencies, their militaries, their energy wasting political machines... Bitcoin energy consumption looks like a killer deal as a global currency in this light.
Bitcoin, provides a rock solid global currency, without violence, without a military, without a political machine, and it does this at the energy cost of just ONE small country. You should be wanting to get rid of the other redundant currencies based in violence.
Further as times goes on an energy prices rise and bitcoin rewards drop, the number of miners will DROP, not rise, thus leading to less energy cost per block. While governments have made some small progress reducing energy usage, Bitcoin is guaranteed to.
Why would you want to defend the violence based, more polluting money?
"if we scaled up Bitcoin by 10,000 to 100,000 times, which is what would be needed to cover every single transaction on the planet, how much energy would it use? (Note that credit cards ..."
Here is the big problem: you have no idea what you are talking about. Here is how I know: The energy cost of bitcoin doesnt rise with number of transactions. In fact the per transaction energy cost of bitcoin will DROP with its increased use. It's mining that is the energy cost, and it doesn't matter how many transactions are in a block, the energy cost is the same. In time, as the competition for reward increases there will be FEWER miners, thus dropping energy costs naturally. This is already happening:
https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-node-count-falls-to-3-year-low-despite-price-surge
Here is an anti-bitcoin site who also mistakes trees for forests. Their own graph shows that energy consumption growth is basically zero over the last couple of years, and in fact, the measured amount (the dotted line) is starting to drop.
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
At least read about what you are arguing. The author of the original post didn't, but if you are going to argue with someone about a topic, you should at least understand the basics before you attempt to. Here is a pretty good overview of this topic.
https://www.coindesk.com/the-last-word-on-bitcoins-energy-consumption
and another review
your turn, please don't make me repeat any of these points. please dont respond until you have actually read the links. There will be a test.
