You can't graft trees younger than 3 years, you have to wait for them to grow that big,  besides, grafting is not for that, it's made to improve the plant or for reproduction, trying to get fruits from a young tree will simply put more stress on its growth reducing the overall amount of fruits you will get from it over his lifespan. You might be able to grow a small lemon tree in an apartment but you'll soon realize you paid 10$ for each of the 10 lemons it made a year.
The second problem is that you're basically forfeiting the advantage vegetables would have when growing them in pots, you restrain the combination of nutrients, so you either use supplements (again $) or you end with the same taste as industrial grown low-cost junk.

Similar to ConocoPhillips’ mining scheme in North Dakota’s Bakken region, Exxon is diverting natural gas that would otherwise be burned off into generators, which convert the gas into electricity used to power shipping containers full of thousands of bitcoin miners. Exxon launched the pilot in late January 2021 and expanded its buildout in July[/i]."

He has spent decades projecting an illusion that Russia is to be feared, however it has barely made any progress in Ukraine - it would get annihilated by NATO if it ever tried to invade anywhere else in Europe.

These growlights from Hydrogen's screenshot are complete garbage. There are so many people buying them on aliexpress and then wondering what da hell is wrong with their plants

Climate activists and crypto billionaire Chris Larsen want to convince Bitcoin companies, miners and developers into changing Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism.

Several climate activist groups including Greenpeace and billionaire Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen are launching a campaign to advocate for Bitcoin moving away from Proof-of-Work, a consensus mechanism they argue consumes an unsustainable amount of energy, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign will attempt to lobby institutions in the Bitcoin industry that pledge an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda, buy ads in leading publications and appeal to communities allegedly suffering from bitcoin miners’ noisy activities to try and convince investors that Bitcoin could use a different consensus protocol that is supposedly both better for the environment and enables a similar degree of security.

The argument, albeit flawed, is not new.

In January, a cohort of U.S. Representatives put the same suggestion forward in a Congressional hearing on bitcoin mining whereby they received two different but complementary responses as to why such a move away from PoW would defeat Bitcoin’s purpose.

John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna Computing and a witness at the January hearing, told Bitcoin Magazine at the time that Bitcoin “can’t take the risk to shift” to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), a consensus mechanism that “may actually undermine what has given [Bitcoin] its strength and growth.” Belizaire added that consensus mechanisms other than PoW “reintroduce the centralized concept of trust.”

Bitcoin miner Bitfury CEO, the former acting comptroller of the currency and a witness at that hearing, Brian Brooks, explained in his statements then that not only it isn’t fitting for policymakers to decide whether Bitcoin represents a “good” use of energy but also that the peer-to-peer monetary system can help the development of the renewable energy economy of the United States.

U.S. Representatives and climate activists still display plenty of misconceptions about Bitcoin and its energy use in their arguments. The House had scheduled the hearing after a cohort of national and international climate-related organizations sent Representatives a letter claiming proof of work (PoW) mining could be hazardous to the world’s climate in the long run.

However, the letter based its arguments on controversial and faulty research, as highlighted by the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) in a fact-checking note it published on January 13. BPI later published another fact sheet to curb possible misinformation being leveraged by the committee in its assessment of Bitcoin’s power usage.

If the “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign bases itself on truthful research and factual arguments, it is unlikely to succeed. Castle Island Ventures Partner Nic Carter wrote last year that the opinions of those who don’t understand Bitcoin should not be taken into consideration in the currency’s energy consumption discussion.

Chris Bendiksen, a Bitcoin researcher at CoinShares and according to the Bloomberg report one of the world’s leading experts on bitcoin mining, echoed Belizaire’s comments and said that moving away from PoW would “destroy the security of the protocol.”

Moreover, Greenpeace’s move might stand in stark contrast to the group’s own interests. Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, tweeted Tuesday about the irony of the climate activist’s move.

“Environmental activists face a high threat of frozen bank accounts and deplatforming,” the tweet reads. “Greenpeace has literally been targeted this way before and will need censorship-resistant fundraising tech again.”

On a different note, to “Change the Code, Not the Climate” requires making a formal code proposal to Bitcoin, not advocating with publication ads, noted the CTO and co-founder of Bitcoin security company Casa, Jameson Lopp, on Twitter.

“Dear @bruneski @chrislarsensf @Greenpeace, I am unable to find your Bitcoin Improvement Proposal submission, nor can I find any discussions initiated by you on the development mailing list,” the tweet says. “Please follow the process if you wish to be taken seriously.”

U.S. Congressman Warren Davidson equaled the campaign to an attempt to ban Bitcoin.

“If you don’t see an attack on Proof-of-Work as an attack on #BTC, you understand neither,” he tweeted. “It’s an attack on the fundamental architecture.”

Pro-Bitcoin U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis also shared her thoughts on the campaign.

“This is a disingenuous play for federal regulatory capture,” she tweeted. “Don’t fall for it. Let ‘em compete.”

The European Union has recently flirted with similar measures at the government level. The region’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) touted banning PoW cryptocurrencies altogether earlier this month over claims that the technology could allegedly hurt EU efforts to promote sustainable innovation. The provision, which was part of the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation and sought to force changes on PoW cryptocurrency’s mining mechanisms, was dropped and substituted by another section that added bitcoin mining to the EU sustainable finance taxonomy.

In the U.S., New York Assembly’s Environmental Conservation Committee voted last week to advance legislation that would impose a ban on bitcoin mining, Bloomberg reported. However, it would still need to pass by the entire Assembly and State Senate and be signed by the Governor to become law, per the report.

According to the Bloomberg report, the campaign believes that about 50 key miners, bitcoin exchanges and core developers have the power to change Bitcoin’s code. Similar coordination among key industry players – including miners – happened in 2017 to increase Bitcoin’s block size, another foundational characteristic of Bitcoin, as transaction fees turned expensive as mainstream interest in Bitcoin skyrocketed. The failed attempt that took place nearly five years ago proved that miners and corporations albeit how powerful cannot force changes on the Bitcoin protocol without the support of nodes and end-users.

“I’d put the chance of Bitcoin ever moving to PoS at exactly 0%,” Bendiksen said, per the report.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/greenpeace-seeks-to-change-bitcoin-code

Report: 76% crypto miners use renewables as part of their energy mix

The use of renewable energy for cryptocurrency mining has seen considerable growth, according to a new report.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/report-76-crypto-miners-use-renewables-as-part-of-their-energy-mix

Greenpeace included with neo-Nazis on UK counter-terror list

A counter-terrorism police document distributed to medical staff and teachers as part of anti-extremism briefings included Greenpeace, Peta and other non-violent groups as well as neo-Nazis, the Guardian has learned.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/17/greenpeace-included-with-neo-nazis-on-uk-counter-terror-list

It has been eight years since Russia last invaded Ukraine. What has changed, and what has not?

Russian exports of oil and natural gas are an essential source of hard currency that helps cover the cost of importing manufactured goods. Russia’s oil, gas, and coal exports are also an essential source of energy for European consumers and businesses, without which they couldn’t generate electricity, fuel their vehicles, or heat their homes and offices.

This entanglement limits the West’s ability to penalize Russian aggression financially. Yes, cutting Russia off from the global financial system would devastate the Russian economy and impose severe hardship on the Russian civilian population, but it would also force Europeans to slash their energy consumption.

Milder sanctions could protect Europe’s access to oil, coal, and gas, but their impact on the Russian government’s behavior would be commensurately smaller. The Putin regime has spent years acclimating Russians to material deprivation and it has also built up substantial financial buffers. Not for the first time, conservative macroeconomic and regulatory policies have shielded a revisionist regime from international pressure.

There was nothing that Europeans could have done about the Russian government’s decision to impose severe costs on its civilian population for the sake of maintaining its own flexibility. But Europeans can and should be blamed for becoming even more reliant on Russian fossil fuel exports since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. They wasted nearly a decade when they could have been greening their economies and also increasing the security of their own neighborhood. Ukrainians—and others—will now have to live with the consequences.

Russia’s Fortress Balance Sheet

The Russian government’s ability to withstand financial pressure was hard-earned. Most obviously, total spending on imported goods and services (in U.S. dollar terms) has consistently been about 25-30% lower than it was before the first invasion of Ukraine. While some of this can be attributed to declines in the world prices of Russia’s oil and gas exports, Western sanctions and Russian domestic policies have also played a role.



The sustained drop in imports has left a mark on Russian consumers’ spending. In inflation-adjusted terms, Russian households spent 12% less in 2016 than they did at the peak in 2014. Even in 2019—before the coronavirus pandemic upended the world economy—Russian consumers were about 2% worse off in material terms than they were before the first invasion of Ukraine.



Meanwhile, Russian businesses and other borrowers responded to external financial pressures—and domestic political ones—by slashing their foreign-currency denominated debt by $200 billion since the beginning of 2014. The Russian government also spent $200 billion adding to its stockpile of reserves (gold, bank deposits, and bonds) since mid-2015.



The net effect is that Russia’s central bank now has enough foreign exchange reserves ($630 billion as of last month) to cover 2021 spending on imports ($368 billion) plus 75% of the country’s entire stock of foreign-currency denominated debt ($353 billion as of 2021Q3).

Much of that debt isn’t even due for at least two years.



None of this, however, is sufficient to protect Russia from the impact of sustained Western sanctions. As the Taliban has discovered, foreign reserves are useless if your counterparties freeze your accounts. Even Russia’s $132 billion in gold reserves couldn’t be used to settle payments if Western banks were banned from touching anything involving Russia.

The Russian government nevertheless feels that it has room to act because it knows that the Europeans need them.

Europe’s Self-Inflicted Error

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2014, I wrote that Russia faced a long-term strategic vulnerability: Europeans had the option to squeeze Russia permanently by reducing their reliance on Russian energy exports. At the time, about 60% of Russia’s total export revenues came from sales of crude oil, refined products, and natural gas—and much of that went to Europe.

The Europeans could have built out their capacity to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the U.S. and other allies. Even better, the Europeans could have reduced their reliance on fossil fuels altogether by building out more alternative energy generation.

Either way, Gazprom’s network of pipelines would have been transformed from a source of leverage into an albatross. Russia could have found other customers for its gas—most obviously China—but building the necessary transportation infrastructure to compensate for the loss of the European market would take years. Russian oil could be sold elsewhere more easily, but the prices would have to be lower if European demand disappeared.

At first glance, it almost looks as if that’s what happened. Russia’s total export revenues from oil and gas fell from $350 billion/year before the first invasion of Ukraine to $231 billion in 2019. While Russians made up the difference by increasing other exports, including food, the squeeze on energy revenues is real.



But the Russian energy export squeeze had nothing to do with European restraint.

In 2013, the countries of the European Union imported about 135 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia. That was equivalent to about 70% of Russia’s total gas exports and equal to 37% of the EU’s worldwide gas imports. Yet in 2019, EU countries imported 166 billion cubic meters of Russian gas—23% more than before the invasion of Ukraine. That was equivalent to 75% of Russia’s total gas exports and 38% of the EU’s worldwide gas imports in 2019.1

European demand for Russian crude oil and refined petroleum products was slightly lower in 2019 than in 2013, but this was offset by surging European demand for Russian coal, which now accounts for almost half of the EU’s coal imports. Put another way, the countries of the EU went from consuming about 62 exajoules of energy in 2013 to 61 exajoules in 2019, while Russia went from supplying 10 exajoules of that energy in 2013 to 11 exajoules in 2019. Despite a slight decline in fossil fuel demand, Russia’s share of the European energy mix rose from 16.5% to 18.5% after the invasion of Ukraine. Europe’s dependence will only increase if the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline comes onstream as planned.



The perverse result is that Europe is at greater risk of Russian pressure than the other way around. Natural gas prices in Europe are now about 5-6 times as high as in the U.S. because Gazprom has been withholding supply and because the lack of LNG terminals has prevented ships from moving gas across the Atlantic.

And while Europeans have made some modest investments in solar and wind energy over the past decade, it hasn’t been nearly enough to make a dent in the overall energy mix, especially after factoring in the impact of the decisions to decommission existing nuclear power plants.

The Europeans seem to have—belatedly—realized the implications of all this. As EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it on Tuesday:


I hope her words are heeded.

https://theovershoot.co/p/russia-was-prepared-to-withstand

There is an idyllic vision of the past that believes it would be wonderful to go back to living in the countryside and working the land and raising animals to produce your food. Those who think that have no idea how much it costs to produce the food they eat all year round, let alone with the variety available to us. And I'm not just talking about money or resources. I'm talking about the physical effort it would take to produce a small part of what you eat.

Growing a few plants indoors and some in small pots will give you two bites but if there is a real situation of serious shortage in the long term, it will not solve anything. And even less if you plant fruits, which will cut off your ketosis.

I don't pray, but whoever does should pray that there is not a serious and long term shortage situation because many people are going to have a very bad time; and planting plants indoors and/or in pots, or having an acre of land will solve little.

I just feel like real estate it way too risky to hold in the long term.

You are not owning the actual real estate but rather the piece of paper that grants you title to the land. Which can be obviously retracted from you at any given time if the government decides to do so.

Also, it's not accessible - there is no access for people with net worth of at least $100-200k in savings.

Cryptoassets and precious metals remain the strongest options in the inflation hedge category imo.

Funny that no one yet suggested walking as an alternative to high gas prices? Walking - will make you be more healthy, fit, improve endurance. Cons - shoe deprecation, takes more time to travel, weather dependable.

Now serious - compare how much km you cover during March to October in city only, divide it to 100 and calculate the amount fuel you spend, to $300+ for a scooter plus several dollars weekly for scooter charge. It might turn, that car is still more profitable.

As for scooters and bicycles, it may be because they don't use as much energy, but about electric cars I doubt it very much. The cost of electricity has also risen a lot recently and you have to think that as combustion cars are replaced by electric cars, the demand for electricity will grow, therefore, the more demand (assuming an equal or lower supply) the price will grow.

In the USA there are almost 300 million cars. Imagine that in a few years these cars will all be electric. Do you know the increase in demand that this would imply?

The main drawback to electric scooters is safety and in many cases insurance of the vehicle. There are many statistics that will tell you that these are very prone to accidents and users tend to misuse them and ride over walkways and the like. I am not so sure you can escape the cost of crude as the cost of electricity has also increased everywhere.

Advice - if you buy one, let it not be chinesse.

Russia is open to accepting bitcoin for its natural resources exports, the chairman of the country’s Congressional energy committee, Pavel Zavalny, said in a press conference on Thursday.

Zavalny explained that Russia is open to accepting different currencies for its exports, beginning with natural gas, depending on the buyer’s preferred method of payment. However, the chairman said terms will depend on the importing country’s foreign relations status with Russia.

“When it comes to our ‘friendly’ countries, like China or Turkey, which don’t pressure us, then we have been offering them for a while to switch payments to national currencies, like rubles and yuan,” Zavalny said during the press conference. “With Turkey, it can be lira and rubles. So there can be a variety of currencies, and that’s a standard practice. If they want bitcoin, we will trade in bitcoin.”

Zavalny’s statement comes on the heels of President Vladimir Putin’s comments on Wednesday demanding that ‘unfriendly’ countries pay for Russian gas in rubles. Putin’s message was clear, but it is unclear whether Russia can unilaterally change existing contracts agreed upon in euros.

The State Duma’s energy committee chair echoed Putin’s decision while adding that the country should also accept gold.

“When we exchange with Western countries…they should pay in hard money,” Zavalny said. “And hard money is gold, or they must pay in currencies which are convenient for us, and that is the national currency – ruble. That relates to our ‘unfriendly’ countries.”

Russia being open to accepting bitcoin shift the tide as Putin last year had dismissed the possibility in an interview at the Russian Energy Week event in Moscow.

“I believe that it has value,” Putin said at the time, referring to Bitcoin. “But I don’t believe it can be used in the oil trade.”

The current size of the Bitcoin market and its liquidity do pose questions as to whether the peer-to-peer currency could be used widely by countries in international trade at this moment.

However, by being open to the possibility and eventually conducting pilot trades with interested parties, Russia could set the stage for an upcoming trend where nations choose to transact in the stateless, global monetary system.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/markets/russia-open-to-sell-gas-for-bitcoin