Classic! I'm going to send the white paper Troy put out with Margot Paez. And I'll link to their podcast appearances on WBD for more info.
This episode of What Bitcoin Did with Troy Cross did a great job of covering the subject. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/can-bitcoin-mining-save-the-environment
Discussion
I usually try to orangepill people on mining by saying something like:
Imagine instead of having to balance the demand of electricity on the producing side with dirty energy sources that can respond quickly to demand, you could overbuild the production side with cleaner sources and balance on the load side with miners instead, and maybe use the heat from them to warm greenhouses or use it for district heating as miners are nothing more than "fancy heaters".
He might like District heating because we're in a country that uses it extensively.
I'm fairly sure I live in the same country aswell. In my house I heat my floorheating and tap water with electric resistors in a watertank. Instead of just using the resistors I have been thinking about adding a hydro miner to the tank aswell and use the resistors more as a backup in case I have high demand for warm water. I would most likely use the same amount of energy but I would get payed in sats by contributing hashpower to a global monetary network. I also have a bunch of solar panels that overproduce at times and that excess energy could go to a miner aswell to heat the water in the tank over the standard 60°c setting to let's say 80°c and act like a primitive battery so I would have warm water all night without having the resistors kicking in when the temperature drops beneath the 60°c mark in the tank. How to make this work automatically is another question but it should be doable. I believe mining is the most misunderstood thing about btc among "normies". I believe it could be part of the solution for future energy production being less dirty.