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Comment by deviledeggs | Hacker News Reader

Hear me out, I don't buy this. NY would have never approved operating a power plant that did such damage to the lake.

Notice they mentioned "surface temperature". Many lakes are naturally stratified in summer. Especially lakes deep for their size. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_stratification

Indeed, Seneca lake is very deep, and naturally thermally stratified in summer:

> Because of Seneca Lake's great depth its temperature remains a near-constant 39 °F (4 °C).[3] In summer the top 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) warms to 70–80 °F (21–27 °C)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Lake_(New_York)

I think crypto mining is a huge waste of energy. But this article has an ax to grind. A simpler explanation for warm surface temps is a warmer than usual summer.

Indeed, NY state has had two major heat waves already this year

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How different is this from Cornell's lake source cooling plant? Opponents of that made the same sorts of claims, but afaik were never able to prove that lake temperatures were any different once you get more than a few yards away from where the water was released. E.g.: https://fcs.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/2020-06/Final_FA...

It's not different :)

Water can absorb enormous amount of energy. And releases huge amounts as it evaporates. And the lake is in contact with massive land surface that also absorbs ton of energy.

The deeper parts of Seneca lake are isothermal with regional ground temperature, so there's clearly no problem with heat dissipation

Honestly, even if they did then blaming bitcoin doesn't seem to be the right thing to blame. Blame the plant regulations. I say this agreeing that mining is a huge waste of energy. But going after bitcoin is like blaming a junky and giving the dealer a free pass.

But isn't this plant operating because it was bought by bitcoin miners? Thus the "junkie" in your allegory is also the manufacturer and dealer?

Yes, but that still doesn't mean that the regulations shouldn't be on the dealer. Even if the dealer is using their own product. The dealer is still the one doing more damage.

I wonder if part of the problem is that they are maybe water cooling the datacenters full of cryptominers? So not only is there the waste heat from the power plant as originally designed, but also the waste heat of its entire energy output is being dumped into the lake instead of being distributed around town.

I do suspect that this is a surface temperature problem. Lakes form thermal gradients pretty easily so if they are only heating the top layer this power plant could noticeably warm the water even if it is producing nowhere near enough heat to warm the entire lake.

I can't argue against the take that this whole thing is just killing the planet for a profit.

27°C doesn't "feel like a hot tub", so currently it must be higher.

The thermal conductivity of water makes that even a temperature a few degrees cooler than the body temperature feels refreshing, which is not the case right now according to the witnesses.

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