That doesn’t mean the information is false, but it likely has certain ideological bias.

You can google/duckduck these use cases yourself, if you don’t like the messenger.

You assume it has to be wasted otherwise. That there’s nothing else it could be used for, or that could be done to prevent it.

But it is wasted, i.e. vented / burned into air (https://twitter.com/Beetcoin/status/1120277815058944001), it’s happening NOW and for many years. And only Bitcoin provides alternative, at least profitable so that it incentivizes to use that vented energy. You can’t force anyone to buy generators and run FoldingAtHome. Well, you can do fundraiser, non-profits or whatever, there’s lot’s of flared gas to use! But none one does that, so they will mine Bitcoin.

You assume it would be profitable, or perhaps that it would be used for bitcoin mining even if it’s not profitable.

Not sure where this comes from. I mean, companies are deploying these systems RIGHT NOW, this is not a hypothesis: https://www.upstreamdata.ca/products

https://www.crusoeenergy.com/

Or you believe that they deploy theses systems with loses?

… And money is of course the ultimate substitute …

Yes, and Bitcoin, so far, is hardest money ever created, moving people into low time preference mode, allowing to save, escape government’s easily inflatable “shitcoins”, and actually reducing waste as they don’t have to spend “by force” for things that they don’t actually need to capture ever inflating fiat value. Users value that, and use it. If you don’t value it, just don’t use it; but destroying it because in your view it’s “wasteful” is insincere.

When warranted, such as when you try to insult my intelligence by spouting cultish Invisible Hand bullshit.

I don’t believe in Invisible Hand. But things just happen. There was warning that world will go down in mass starvation - but someone discovered way to capture nitrogen and create fertilizer. Money printer goes brrr and someone arrived at solution to created Bitcoin. It just happens. It might happen that some one will change Bitcoin with the better alternative - I can’t deny that in the same way as no one knew for sure that Bitcoin will appear “from nowhere”.

But in any case, how much of current bitcoin mining infrastructure would you say is portable? And to what degree is it portable? Like, how long would it take to tear down, move and put up a mining facility of decent size?

I don’t know the details, but they do move around: https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-power-sees-short-term-fallback-as-rainy-season-ends-in-china :

Miners without sufficient hydropower supply would have to shut down their operations or relocate to other provinces like Xinjiang or Inner Mongolio, where mining farms have a more stable, but more expensive, power supply generated from fossil fuel plants.

For the purpose of mining more Bitcoin, of course… Alternatively we could simply not do that, and use the energy saved from not mining bitcoin instead of using even more resources to build more power plants that we wouldn’t really need if not for all the bitcoin mining.

Maybe for Bitcoin, maybe for else, who known, it’s for owners to decide. Yes, they could not do that and vend natural gas as they are doing for the 100 years…

Maybe the biggest crises our civilization has ever faced is caused by us messing with nature to the point that it’s about to collapse. And you suggest we should do more of that?

Yes we should take care of nature as much as possible, and using that flared gas is one of the methods.

Introducing hard money also helps a lot, as it moves thinking into low time preference (See Bitcoin Standard book from Saifedean Ammous), reducing malinvestments (because you can’t bailout Bitcoin owner, there’s no file->print, so three’s actual risk and actual responsibility) and actually wasteful over-consumption. Without printing press there would be no subsidies for “fiat food” - agriculture that destroys ecosystems (grasslands, prairies, event forests and jungles) by eroding soil, and also destroying human health with all these oxidizing carbs and industrial seed oils (“vegetable oils” lol), which also costs a lot in various terms (there was info about how much USA health care produces CO2, for example, sorry don’t have a link, but it’s hudge).

No one really would want to spend precious satoshis on gadget that will break in few months, or just get bored of it (like fidged spinners as silly example). That would be responsible economy.