* Most renewable/stranded energy mining operations have their own energy source that is not going to be shared by someone else.
* Bitcoin's energy consumption doesn't scale with the number of transactions on each block.
* Most of the bitcoin has already been mined, the incentive to "mine aggressively" is decreasing over time.
* "What if bitcoin uses all the energy", like the top poster on this thread was talking about, they were mocking it to say that all of the energy generated by the sun will be used for mining eventually, is this a fair argument? If such extremist thinking took hold, we could use it to subdue pretty much all progress. Did we think that there will be gold miners digging up land everywhere and we won't have a place to live?
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435464
2. "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
look at this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26440168
They straight up want destruction, without even considering merits of the new technology.