Hass McCook is a civil engineer who has been delivering estimates of Bitcoin's energy use and CO2 emissions since 2014, as well as alternatives like gold or finance. In this episode: 

• Hass's background in civil engineering and how it prepared him for the energy debate
• The conflation between energy generation and electricity generation
• Why you can't just generalize energy consumption to carbon emissions
• Hass breaks down the varying carbon intensities of different sources of generation
• How much energy goes to waste globally
• The difference between CO2 and CO2e / greenhouse gases
• Why today's US grid has lowered its carbon intensity over the last decade
• Why combusting methane is a net good from an emissions perspective
• Hass' level of optimism around flared gas mining
• Why the changing rate of ASIC innovation affects bitcoin's energy consumption
• The opportunity for stranded gas at landfills
• Hass' estimates of the gold and the financial system's energy footprints
• How gold mining actually works
• The ecological and human cost of gold mining
• Hass' thoughts on offsets

Sponsor notes:

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