The New York Times is widely regarded as the world leader in fake news. It is an organization of activists, larping as journalists, who are focused solely on furthering extreme left political agendas at the expense of unbiased reporting. It comes as no surprise that their latest hit piece on the Bitcoin mining industry is nothing but a complete fraud.
Author Gabriel J.X. Dance begins by attempting to blame Bitcoin miners for the Texas power outages that occurred in February 2021. The blackout left millions of people without power for several days and resulted in nearly 40 people freezing to death. This according to the author is the result of a Bitcoin mining operation in Rockdale, Texas, putting “immense pressure on the power grid and finding ways to profit from doing so”. Not only is this intentional misdirection, but despite allegedly conducting extensive research and travelling to Rockdale, he couldn’t even get its name right. The reality is this devastating blackout was a crisis manufactured by the Biden administration, who the New York Times is a mouthpiece for. On February 14th, 2021, Biden’s Department of Energy issued emergency order 202-21-1. Essentially, this forced Texas energy grid operator ERCOT to stay within bogus green energy standards or face prosecution. Days prior, in anticipation of the polar vortex hitting Texas, Governor Greg Abbott had made a disaster declaration and he instructed ERCOT to prepare to increase the supply of gas to generators to meet a surge in demand. Biden’s Department of Energy could have waived environmental restrictions to allow maximum energy output, instead they stepped in to prevent it with their emergency order because it would “violate federal air quality or permit limitations”. The order states that “all entities must comply with environmental requirements to the maximum extent necessary to operate consistent with the emergency conditions. This order does not provide relief from an entity’s obligations to purchase allowances for emissions that occur during the emergency condition or to use the other geographic temporal flexibilities available to generators”. Further, “ERCOT anticipates that this Order may result in exceedance of emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon monoxide emissions, as well as wastewater release limits. To minimize adverse environmental impacts, this order limits operation of dispatched units to the times within the parameters determined by ERCOT for reliability purposes”. The department of energy then forced ERCOT to purchase “green energy” from outside the state, that was unreliable and couldn’t meet demand. Not only that but, it was sold to them at an astronomical $1,500/MWh, a markup of over 6,000% from the price of $18.20 in February 2020. Clearly, the documents show that the Biden administration is responsible for this disaster. They forced ERCOT to throttle its energy output in the name of saving the environment, at the expense of Texans who suffered the resulting blackouts and the dozens of people who froze to death.
This is not the only thing that the New York Times was willing to blatantly lie about. One favorite tactic of these environmental zealots is to trick the average person into believing that water vapor, being emitted from coal power plants, is polluting the surrounding atmosphere, which is completely absurd. You know when you’re standing outside in the cold and you exhale air, it looks like you are blowing out smoke? Well, it’s literally the same thing that’s happening with these power stations. What appears as smoke is tiny droplets of water and the result of warm moisture meeting cold air. With the Bitcoin mining facilities there were no chimneys emitting water vapor, so the New York Times had to take a slightly different approach. Their article features several drone shots of the Texas Bitcoin mining operations. These have been manipulated to give the appearance of smog surrounding the facilities, so that the New York Times can further their deception that Bitcoin mining is bad for the environment. Any person familiar with color grading would immediately be able to tell what’s going on here. Firstly by analyzing the footage in video editing software like Davinci Resolve, you can see that blacks in the image have been lifted to an abnormal level.
Normally when color grading footage, you want the scopes to show color close to the top and bottom of the graph without exceeding the boundary. This is to get the greatest contrast out of the image without crushing the blacks or highlights. By lifting the blacks to make them look lighter gray and reduce the image contrast, the New York Times have created the illusion of smog surrounding the Bitcoin mining facilities. To further aid this illusion, it’s my belief that the drone used to capture the video was equipped with a black mist lens filter. This makes highlights in the image bloom to the point where it creates a “mist” effect around the light source. Here are some examples of an image with different strengths of mist filter applied to the camera lens.
In the case of the drone footage, the light source is the sun which is conveniently situated just out of frame. We know this because the sun is also casting shadows on the ground. In another drone shot, the haze seems to be absent because the camera is no longer pointing in the direction of the sun. In this shot it becomes obvious that the images were also heavily desaturated to remove color. As you can see the trees in the background, as well as the grass, look brown when they should be green. The water as well, looks more gray than blue. Alternate footage, published by Bitdeer, paints a completely different picture of this Bitcoin mining facility. Theres clear skies, vibrant blue water, green grass, and an abundance of healthy forestry. This does not suit the narrative of the New York Times and thus, they went to great lengths to deceive the public with their work of fiction. Jordan Vonderhaar, the person who captured the footage, denies that the footage was in any way manipulated, but refuses to release the raw footage from the camera so that it can be analyzed. In any case, he concedes that the footage was captured at sunrise on a humid morning when water vapor may have been present in the air. Data from the National Weather Service shows that haze was only detected in the vicinity of Rockdale Texas on 12 days, including only 7 mornings, in the last year. So, the footage is highly selective at best.
The reality of Bitcoin mining is that it has 0 carbon emissions. Miners do not produce any CO2 at all, which according to the New York Times is the thing destroying the environment, because you know, carbon dioxide sounds scary. This is despite the fact it is literally what plants breathe and need to sustain their growth. But that’s something for another video, the point is that the whole saving the environment argument is based on big fat lie. Bitcoin mining also predominantly sources its electricity from “renewable sources” like hydro, so anyone arguing that that the emissions lie with the source of attempting to gaslight you. Funnily, this logic does apply when it comes to electric vehicles which are comparable to Bitcoin miners in that both consume electricity and produce zero emissions. EV’s are beloved by the environmental zealots to the point where they attempting to force their adoption outlawing superior combustion engine vehicles. What they won’t mention is the gaping holes left in the surface of the earth after extracting rare Earth minerals required for EV components like batteries. Nor the fact that the environmental impact of producing electric vehicles is many times greater than that during the entire lifetime of a combustion engine vehicle. These facts are facts are of course completely disregarded and none of these actions are about “saving the environment. What’s really happening is that there is an agenda being carried out to deindustrialize Western nations. This is part of the reason why Bitcoin mining is now in the crosshairs, not to mention the fact it is a threat to the U.S. Governments Central Bank Digital Currency they are planning to soon roll out.
Bitcoin miners need to remain vigilant as attacks against the industry continue to ramp up. The enemy does not play by the rules, and they will do whatever it takes to shut Bitcoin miners down. Historically I shook my head when I saw miners capitulate to the demands of environmental zealots. Clearly miners thought that by appeasing the environmentalists, they would get off their backs. But you give them an inch and they take a mile. I’m pleased to say that after seeing the response to the New York Times hit piece, I think miners have reached a point where they are tired of this encroachment on their industry. Enough is enough, don’t mess with Texas.
