If you thought things couldn't get stupider, someone just held a CO2 reader up to a PC to prove 'bitcoin mining has zero carbon emissions'
Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms recently shared a video claiming that its crypto mining operation «has zero carbon emissions,» and if you think that's ridiculous, wait until you see how it reached that conclusion.
The astonishing claim was made in a video posted to YouTube and Twitter(opens in new tab) which begins with a man in a helmet and hi-vis vest walking through thin, patchy Texas scrub as he tests the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. «We've got lots of plants here,» he says, which is the first obvious lie, because quite clearly there are not a lot of plants anywhere nearby. «These plants are consuming CO2 and emitting oxygen, which is fantastic. When we measure CO2 out here, we're in the green. There are very low levels of CO2.»
At that point, the man in the helmet says that the test is «a great way to establish a baseline,» which will be compared to the CO2 readings inside: «If the number does not go up, then the mining rigs are not emitting CO2.»
This is where I first started feeling confused. Surely the man in the helmet was not going to take his tester into the mining facility and hold it up to a bank of rigs to see how much carbon dioxide they're kicking out, because that would make no sense. It would barely even qualify as sane. Yet that is exactly what he does.
«Outside, we were at 455 parts per million of CO2,» he says, with a completely straight face, after moving indoors. «Inside, we're at 428 parts per million of CO2. So CO2 levels actually decrease a little bit by entering this bitcoin mining facility.»
But lo! Perhaps you still have doubts. To reinforce his point, the man in the helmet relocates to an air-cooled mining facility and conducts another test, finding 452 parts per million
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