The latest ecological bandwagon.....

... it appears that certain quarters are now considering the internet as damaging to the environment due to the increase in the number of server centres in the World using fossil fuelled power stations.

By the time we have done we will be back to medieval times and using only iron, wood , and building houses with thatch' timber and mud covered with 'wattle and daub'.
Oh! Hang on! Environmentalists will close down all the blacksmiths and forges as they require fossil fuels. Oh! and we wont be able to use horses and oxen for transportation and farming since the animal rights activists will stop that too! We will have to walk around barefoot and naked as Vegans wont let us use leather for shoes nor wool. Honey will be off the menu for sweeteners as "it is not ours to take" as one AR activist recently said.

Grim times await!!

 

Bitcoin mining. Uses excessive real-world resources to create ‘virtual’ currency. Anyone got any magic beans for sale?

 

Surely what they want is for them to be powered by renewable sources (which is an admirable aim) rather than shutting down the internet. Why do you get so annoyed about stuff like this?

 

Who says I am annoyed? It was a light hearted post. It's just there are so many 'bandwagons' these days the noise is deafening
Why do you take thing so seriously?

 

Don't know much about bitcoins and crypto currencies (frankly I dont really care) as it seems lat first glance like a sophisticated form of pyramid selling to me, but I read there were a finite number of bitcoins to be 'mined' Surely by now they have all been found?
PS I always thought excessive fractionalisation in banking was bad enough!

 

I take your point, and where do we draw the line etc? But another bandwagon is the aim of some meat-munchers to make vegans look like pillocks. Damn those vegans with their good intentions trying to save helpless animals from the abattoir. The world's woes are surely down to their pedantry etc etc

 

No problem with Vegans other than we have few friends who are and they cause me to scurry to the bookshelf , or scour the internet for Vegan recipes when we entertain. None of the ones we know are pushy or disapproving of us as meat eaters.

I disagree with militant Animal rights activists in the same way as I do with zealots of any cause including some militant Environmentalists who carry out criminal acts, damage property and threaten and assault people.
Passive protests like GT's I don't support but contrary to what some on here think, nor do I fear, hate, feel threatened or intimidated by her. I just feel her actions will be ineffective. Protesting and simply trying to stop something without clear detailed plan on how to solve the problem rarely if ever achieves a result.
Someone on here recently tried to compare her to a Suffragette but they had a single, easy to resolve objectives. They wanted the vote! Being compared to Ghandi is another reference I recently saw but , again, he wanted Independence for a single country. Global warming and the environment is hugely complex, requires co-ordination and Worldwide response and overhaul of every economic and political system in the World not to mention changing virtually the whole World population's expectations and lifestyles. A 17 year old and her youthful acolytes are correct in their analysis that the World is in a mess but have absolutely no real idea how to go about fixing it.

The cynic in me says 'tinkering around the edges' is the best we can manage but is not the answer and there IS no practical solution that World leaders will agree on. Ultimately the Earth and nature will take care of itself as it will change but its very existence is NOT under threat. We as a species are, and something like Coronavirus but far worse will probably appear at some point and cull the population to 'manageable numbers' before the Earth recovers.

 

The electrical cost of bitcoin generation is greater than all of the savings worldwide through renewable energy...

 

I saw an article about music. The environmental impact of music distribution saw several step changes; the first on the introduction of vinyl, a bigger one after CDs, but the biggest by far is when people started streaming audio (Spotify etc). Extrapolating from that, the environmental impact of streaming video must be horrendous.

 

It's refreshing that your friends aren't pushy or disapproving of meat eaters/non vegans. People do what they want to do. The trouble begins when people start pointing fingers/judging/get up on their high horse - it's personal choice etc. As for the vegan recipe I wouldn't worry too much - the world has come a long way since lettuce and Portobello mushroom in a tea cake and I think there are a lot of options now and people (on the whole!!) are easily pleased; I certainly wouldn't cause a fuss, I'd just be grateful for the hospitality etc.. If you/they like spaghetti and haven't tried it yet, try this: https://www.tasteatlas.com/aglio-e-olio/recipe. My Sicilian barber recommended it, and I now have it on a weekly basis.

I also disagree with anything militant for the reasons given above. Plus it ultimately breeds contempt and divides people; the world has enough issues. As for GT, I live in Bristol so I was surrounded by the frenzy before and after her visit. I think she is trying to do some good in the world, I think some people have been very cruel towards her, unnecessarily, and I think she raises important issues and importantly has raised awareness (obviously collectively many of us are aware, but I think for the younger generation she has galvanised them, focused their thinking on environmental issues and out of smart phones for a moment, which can only be a good thing. Comparisons to the suffragettes and Ghandi are ridiculous and unhelpful, and I'm sure she's probably embarrassed by them. I totally agree with what you say though, in that simply shouting about the issues without a solid plan isn't going to bring radical change, and 'co-ordination and a worldwide response' seems incomprehensible on anything at present.

 

Crikey , your serious posts must be heavy if that’s lighthearted.

 

It was the OP that was light hearted . The one you responed to was me replying to one poster where I was accused of being "annoyed" and one about Veganism. ( I was agreeing not all Vegans are a P.I.T.A.)

 

Is Pita vegan ? I usually only have it with a kebab which obviously isn’t but is the pita bread vegan

 

Magic beans are currency - I mean they were used as a medium for exchange - and it turned out well for Jack in the end. I have a crypto-currency wallet and buy and sell bitcoin as well as other crypto-currencies. I have a debit card linked to the wallet that allows me to pay for goods and services like any other card which is billed in Pounds and converted to the crypto I chose to make the transaction in. Watch the ups and downs - spend when things are up and buy when they are down. I have had the account for over a year now and made about £3000 profit without too much risk. Some beans. Some magic.